Attentional Functions In Children Research Articles

Impaired and enhanced attentional function in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The symptom domain of inattention in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suggests that there are neuropsychological fields of attention in which subjects with ADHD express deficits. However, studies using differentiated neuropsychological attentional tests in ADHD are lacking. A consecutive series of 35 subjects with ADHD aged 9-12 years were assessed on a computer-driven neuropsychological test battery for attentional functions. Their performance was classified according to the data of a normative sample of 187 healthy subjects aged 9-12 years, and compared with the performance of 35 matched healthy control subjects. According to normative data, most ADHD subjects performed on all attentional measures within the normal range. Comparisons with the control group revealed that ADHD subjects reacted faster on all attentional tests, yielding statistical significance for the Go/No go test and the Divided Attention test. They also performed with significantly fewer errors on the Divided Attention test. On the Go/No go test, Visual Scanning test and Attentional Shift test ADHD subjects committed significantly more errors than control subjects. Our results suggest a differential pattern rather than a deficit pattern of attentional functions in ADHD. It is suggested that the more rapid response style of ADHD subjects leads to a more erroneous performance in self-paced attentional tasks and to a better performance in externally paced attentional tasks. However, neuropsychological tests of attention do not contribute to the clinical diagnosis of ADHD.

Attentional Function in Children with Arithmetic Disability

s: Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: September 27-28, 1998 Cleveland, Ohio: Presented Sunday, September 27, 1998: Language Disability, Learning Disability, and ADHD: PDF Only

Motivational orientation and span of apprehension in children with mental retardation.

Children diagnosed as mildly mentally retarded were examined with respect to performance on Estes's (1965) span-of-apprehension task. Based on their scores on the Simplified Version of the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility scale, we divided subjects into a "learned-helpless" group and a "mastery-oriented" group. Motivational orientation had a significant effect on performance, with the mastery-oriented subjects demonstrating higher detection accuracies than the learned-helpless subjects. These results have implications regarding not only centrally mediated attentional functioning in children with mental retardation, but also interpretation of certain previous findings with the span-of-apprehension task.

Associative predispositions and flexibility of learned behavior

Data on the development of the attentional systems remain scarce. We used structural and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate differences in the neural mechanisms associated with alerting, reorienting, and executive control of attention between children (ages 8 to 12 years) and adults, while controlling for effects of performance and brain morphology. Behaviorally, children exhibited a numerically smaller alerting effect and significantly larger invalidity (reorienting) and interference (executive control of attention) effects. Neurally, children showed significantly reduced brain activation in a priori defined regions-of-interest in right-sided frontal–midbrain regions during alerting, in the right-sided temporo-parietal junction during reorienting of attention, and in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during executive control of attention. In addition, children activated significantly more brain regions outside the a priori defined regions-of-interest, such as the superior frontal gyrus during reorienting and the superior temporal gyrus during executive control of attention. Functional group differences overlapped with structural group differences in gray matter volume in particular within the frontopolar areas. The data suggest that there is a transition from functional yet immature systems supporting attentional functions in children to the more definitive adult networks and that the differences observed may reflect both developmental changes in cognitive strategies and morphology.

A comparison of behavioral and attentional functioning in children diagnosed as hyperactive or learning-disabled

The attentional and behavioral functioning of children diagnosed as hyperactive (ADHD), learning-disabled (LD), and hyperactive/learning-disabled were compared, using standardized behavior rating scales across raters and settings, and results from a battery of standardized neuropsychological tests. The ADHD and LD groups were "pure" samples with respect to comorbidity. Multiple discriminant-function analyses on the behavioral and neuropsychological data showed that one variate made clear-cut discriminations among and between each of the three groups. The constructs self-regulation, task accuracy/planning/speed, and aggression differentiated the three groups, while sustained attention did not. The results lend strong support to the validity of ADHD as a diagnostic entity apart from LD, and suggest that poor self-regulation and inhibition of behavior may be the hallmark of ADHD.