Abstract
This research explored the effects of social interaction training with a collaborative puzzle task on children of foreign nationals with ADHD in Japan. The collaborative puzzle task was designed to minimize the need to use language and to require cooperation with another person. The task involved the executive function that is considered to control a variety of goal-directed behaviors in everyday life. An intervention was carried out for two elementary school students of foreign nationals with ADHD twice a week for two months. The results showed that the intervention enhanced cooperative behavior and reduced the impulsive wandering behavior of children. However, it did not improve the performance of the traditional executive function tasks that reflect competence in cognitive and attentional control. The current findings indicate that the collaborative puzzle task enables children with ADHD to train the "hot" executive function that is important for control of emotional and motivational reactivity in social situations, and which is distinct from the "cool" executive function related more to cognitive and attentional regulation
