In vertebrates, it is well documented that the parental consumption of high-fat diet increases the risk of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in offspring. While insects have long been used as popular study organisms in various biological research, few studies have explored how the nutritional quality of parental diet affects offspring behavioral phenotypes associated with ADHD in insects. Here we used the bean bug, Riptortus pedestris (Hemiptera: Alydidae), as a study organism to test the effect of parental high-fat diet on offspring hyperactivity, impulsivity, and diffuse attention, which are widely held as the three core symptoms of ADHD in vertebrates. Peanut was used as the high-fat diet while soybean was the control. Parental high-fat diet consumption induced hyperactivity in R. pedestris offspring. Compared to the controls, the hyperactive offspring of parents fed on high-fat diet were behaviorally more impulsive and less attentive, as they were found to be highly attracted to visual stimuli but losing attention easily. Collectively, these results provide the experimental evidence that the parental consumption of high-fat diet results in increased hyperactivity, impulsivity, and diffuse attention in an insect. This study implies that the well-known association between parental high-fat diet and offspring ADHD is conserved across the tree of life and opens up the new horizons that insects can arise as novel and feasible models for studying the mechanism and evolution of this common neurodevelopmental disorder in humans.

The purpose of this thesis is to verify the effects of animal assisted therapy program using therapy dogs for the impulsivity of children with ADHD. The researcher conducted a survey with 3 elementary school students : 11, 12, and 13 years old male students who were diagnosed with ADHD by the ‘Children Psychological Counseling Center’ in P city in Gyeonggi-do. The program was in session, two observers recorded the specific target behaviors and created a graph and chart showing the change in hyperactivity. Due to the small sample size, it might be hard to prove the statistical significance of the results, researcher uesd qualitative data analysis to show the statistical ignificance. Comparing the Before and After test results, it shows that children's impulsivity decreases. In conclusion, animal assisted therapy program using therapy dogs could be used effectively for the therapy of impulsivity of ADHD children.