A Psychophysical Measure of Attention Deficit in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

The authors explored the temporal mechanism of attention deficit in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In rapid serial visual presentation tasks in which two targets (T? and T?) were presented in close temporal proximity among distractors, participants tried to identify T? and detect T? in one (dual-task) experiment and only to detect T? in a second control (single-task) experiment. The sensitivity of T? detection was analyzed using signal detection theory. The attentional blink--the impairment in T? detection following the identification of T?--was increased in magnitude and protracted in the patients. Moreover, some ADHD children appeared to have a blink largely normal in magnitude but temporally displaced toward a later time. The authors hypothesize that a slower closing of the attention gate may mediate this specific attention impairment in ADHD children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)