Attention Mechanisms in Children with Anxiety Disorders and in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Implications for Research and Practice

Abstract

Inattention is among the most commonly referred problems for school-aged youth. Research suggests distinct mechanisms may contribute to attention problems in youth with anxiety disorders versus youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compared children (8–17 years) with anxiety disorders (n = 24) and children (8–16 years) with ADHD (n = 23) on neurocognitive tests of both general and emotion-based attention processes. As hypothesized, children with ADHD demonstrated poorer selective and sustained attention, whereas youth with anxiety disorders demonstrated greater attentional bias toward threatening faces on a visual probe task. Findings suggest the neuropsychological differentiation of attention problems in anxious and ADHD children, despite potentially similar phenotypes.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by student grant awards from the New Jersey Psychological Association and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Child and Adolescent Anxiety Special Interest Group. We thank Jeffrey T. Vietri for his contribution to the Faces Dot Probe Task, Christopher Dudek for his assistance with data collection, and Marsha E. Bates and Mark Cooperberg for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the children and parents who took part in this study.

Notes

Note: ANX = anxiety disorder; ADHD = attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Note: ANX = anxiety disorder; ADHD = attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. CPT-OmT = Conners’ Continuous Performance Test Errors of Omission T-Score; CPT-ComT = Conners’ Continuous Performance Test Errors of Commission T-Score; CPT-AttT = Conners’ Continuous Performance Test Attention (d’) T score; SCW-T = Stroop Color-Word Age-Corrected T score; SCW-Err = Stroop Color-Word Number of Errors. High T scores on the Conners’ Continuous Performance Test reflect poor performance; high T scores on the Stroop Color-Word Test reflect good performance.

*p < .05. **p < .005.

Note. FDP-Angry = Faces Dot Probe Threat Bias Score; FDP-Sad = Faces Dot Probe Sad Bias Score; FDP-Happy = Faces Dot Probe Happy Bias Score.

**p < .005.