Performance of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on a Test Battery of Impulsiveness

Abstract

Children with ADHD were compared to healthy controls on a task battery of cognitive control, measuring motor inhibition (Go/No-Go and Stop tasks), cognitive inhibition (motor Stroop and Switch tasks), sustained attention and time discrimination. Children with ADHD showed an inconsistent and premature response style across all 6 tasks. In addition they showed task-specific impairments in measures of sustained attention, time discrimination, and motor inhibition, but spared cognitive inhibition. Measures of impairment correlated with behavioral hyperactivity and with each other, suggesting that they measure interrelated aspects of a multifaceted construct of cognitive impulsiveness. The task battery as a whole showed 76% correct discrimination of cases and controls.

Keywords:

• attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• impulsiveness
• motor inhibition
• continuous performance task (CPT)
• attention
• time estimation

We thank Raoul Horbe-Forbes, Dr. John Wang and Maxine Sinclair for their help with the data collection and Serena Maja for programming the task battery.