can you explain these results in much simpler terms please:


A 2 × 2 × 3 mixed ANOVA was conducted with one between subjects factor: group (ADHD vs. TDC) and two within subject factors: noise condition (no noise vs. noise) and task (spanboard; word recall; 2-back). The ANOVA showed a positive main effect of noise [F(1,38) = 5.71, p = 0.022, η2 = 0.131]. The interaction between task and noise, i.e., noise affected tasks differently, did not reach significance but indicated a trend [F(2,76) = 3.86, p = 0.057]; also a trend toward interaction between group and noise was found [F(1,38) = 3.10, p = 0.086] indicating a larger
noise benefit for ADHD children. The between group factor for overall task performance did not reach significance, however, the TDC group performed tasks marginally superior to the ADHD group [F(1,38) = 3.71, p = 0.062].
A second 2 × 2 × 3 ANOVA was conducted, just comprising the ADHD group with three within subjects factors: noise (no noise vs. noise), medication (off vs. on medication), and task (spanboard, word recall, 2-back). This ANOVA showed a strong positive main effect of noise [F(1,19) = 16.64, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.467] and no main effect of medication [F(1,19) = 0.63, p = 0.436]. Further, an interaction between medication and noise, i.e., the benefit of noise was larger than the one of medication [F(1) = 4.88, p = 0.040, η2 = 0.204], and also an interaction between task and noise was found, noise affected the three tasks differently [F(2,18) = 11.40, p = 0.003, η2 = 0.375]. The three- way interaction between task, noise, and medication did not reach significance [F(2) = 3.13, p = 0.093].
Post hoc analyses, by using independent samples t-tests task by task, showed noise benefit in the spanboard- and word recall task but not in the 2-back task. In the spanboard task a paired samples t-test showed that performance in terms of successfully recalled dots increased significantly by introduction of noise as compared to no noise in non-medicated ADHD children [t = (19) = 3.18, p = 0.005], as well as in medicated children [t = (19) = 2.28, p = 0.034]. A (2 × 2) within subject ANOVA showed a tendency to interaction between noise and medication [F(1,19) = 3.51, p = 0.077] in this task (see Figure 1).
The control group was not influenced by noise, an independent samples t-test displayed that the TDC superior performance in the spanboard task compared to the ADHD group in the silent condition [t(38) = 2.52, p = 0.016] disappeared during noise exposure [t(38) = 0.68, p = 0.504]. The medicated children did not fully reach the performance of TDC in no noise condition [t(38) = 1.85, p = 0.072]. There was no significant effect of medication on children with ADHD in no noise condition, the improvement by medication did not reach significance [t(19) = 1.91, p = 0.071]. However, the control group did not differ significantly from the ADHD group in the presence of noise irrespective of medication or not (see Figure 1).
In the word recall task (free recall), a paired samples test showed that noise significantly improved the number of correctly recalled words compared to no noise condition in absence of medication [t = (19) = 4.92, p < 0.0005]. In the no noise condition, the non-medicated ADHD group performed worse than the TD group [t(38) = 2.45, p = 0.019]; however, this difference was eliminated by noise. No effect of medication was found in this task and no effect of noise was found in the ADHD group during medication, or in the control group. Finally we found a significant interaction between noise and medication in this task within the ADHD group [F(1,19) = 5.43, p = 0.031] (see Figure 2). Table 2 reports performance in raw score in the spanbord- and the word recall tasks for both ADHD- and TDC groups with t-statistics.
In the verbal 2-back task no significant results of either noise or medication was found in either group (see Table 3). When looking at the number of correctly recalled items both groups performed equally well [ADHD = 22,5 vs. TDC = 22,9; F(1,38) = 0.07, p = 0.787]. No interaction between group and noise and no main effect of noise on ADHD was found (p = 0.136). No effect of medication was found. There was a nominal positive effect of noise on the ADHD group but it was far from reaching any significance. However, when looking at the response time we got a significant group difference, as TDC were faster than the ADHD group [34.1 vs. 40.8 s; t(38) = 2.81,
p = 0.008]. The only effect of noise exposure was on the TDC group where noise increased speed on task performance [35.3 vs. 32.8; t(19) = 2.17, p = 0.043]. Noise had little effect on the speed of the ADHD group and the interaction between noise and group indicated a trend [F(1,38) = 3.35, p = 0.075]. At last, the effect of test occasion was non-significant, but nominally there was a slight improvement for the TDC group in the second test session.