Abstract
The ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions is essential to the development of complex social cognition behaviors, and impairments in this ability are associated with poor social competence. This study aimed to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions and nonfacial stimuli in young adults with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Thirty-five men (mean age 25.4) with (n = 19) and without (n = 16) ADHD participated in the study. During the five days preceding the experimental session, the participants were required to sleep at least seven hours per night (23:00/24:00–7:00/9:00) and their sleep was monitored via actigraphy. On the morning of the experimental session, the participants completed a 4-stimulus visual oddball task combining facial and nonfacial stimuli, and repeated it after 25 h of sustained wakefulness. At baseline, both study groups had poorer performance in response to facial rather than non-facial target stimuli on all indices of the oddball task, with no differences between the groups. Following sleep deprivation, rates of omission errors, commission errors and reaction time variability increased significantly in the ADHD group but not in the control group. Time and target type (face/non-face) did not have an interactive effect on any indices of the oddball task. Young adults with ADHD are more sensitive to the negative effects of sleep deprivation on attentional processes, including those related to the processing of emotional facial expressions. As poor sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness are common in individuals with ADHD, it is feasible that poor sleep quality and quantity play an important role in cognitive functioning deficits, including the processing of emotional facial expressions that are associated with ADHD.
Highlights
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that includes symptoms of impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattention
The visual oddball paradigm examines the process that allows for the maintenance of response persistence over time to visual stimuli, with decreased sustained attention reflected by lower reaction time to the stimuli (RT), instability in the reaction time to the stimuli (RTSD), and difficulties in detecting the target stimuli and in response inhibition to the non-target stimuli
Our first hypothesis was that following sleep deprivation, performance on the oddball task would deteriorate, as reflected by lower sustained attention and decreased response inhibition
Summary
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that includes symptoms of impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattention. 25–50% of children and adults with ADHD experience problems initiating and maintaining sleep[18,19], which may contribute to their difficulties in vigilance, response inhibition, and other aspects of attention and in their ability to process emotional facial expressions. Lending support to this possibility, sleep deprivation tends to have a negative effect on sustained attention[20,21,22] and on the ability to identify emotional expressions[23,24,25]. It is currently unknown whether sleep deprivation affects the attentional process involved in the detection of, and response to, emotional facial expressions in general, and among adults with ADHD in particular
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