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DISTRACTIBILITY IN AD/HD PREDOMINANTLY INATTENTIVE AND COMBINED SUBTYPES: THE P3a ERP COMPONENT, HEART RATE AND PERFORMANCE

2006; Imperial College Press; Volume: 05; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1142/s0219635206001070

1757-448X

Hannah A. D. Keage, Christopher Clark, Daniel F. Hermens, Michael Kohn, Simon Clarke, Leanne M. Williams, David P. Crewther, Chris Lamb, Evian Gordon,

Functional Brain Connectivity Studies

The current study aimed to investigate whether children and adolescents diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Predominantly Inattentive (AD/HD-in; Child n = 24, Adolescent n = 33) and Combined (AD/HD-com; Child n = 30, Adolescent n = 42) subtypes were more distractible than controls (Child n = 54; Adolescents n = 75), by assessing event-related potential (ERP), performance and peripheral arousal measures. All AD/HD groups displayed smaller amplitudes and/or shorter latencies of the P3a ERP component - thought to reflect involuntary attention switching - following task-deviant novel stimuli (checkerboard patterns) embedded in a Working Memory (WM) task. The P3a results suggested that both AD/HD-in and AD/HD-com subtypes ineffectively evaluate deviant stimuli and are hence more "distractible". These abnormalities were most pronounced over the central areas. AD/HD groups did not display any abnormalities in averaged heart rate over the WM task, a measure of peripheral arousal. They did display abnormalities in performance measures from the task, but these were unrelated to P3a abnormalities. AD/HD groups also displayed a number of deficits on Switching of Attention and Verbal Memory tasks, however, the pattern of abnormality mostly reflected general cognitive deficits rather than resulting from distraction.