Vigilance and attention in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

The Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in childhood and it is characterized by inattentiveness, over-activity and impulsivity. There are significant amount of neuropsychological evidence showing that one of the main ADHD symptoms could be an impairment of attentional processes. Recent findings seem to indicate that a low level of arousal/alerting could explain part of the ADHD symptoms. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency and interactions of attentional systems in children with ADHD. Seventyfour drug-naïve children, twenty-nine ADHD and forty-five typically developing children/adolescents (TDC) aged between 6 and 15 completed the Attention Network Test for Interaction and Vigilance (ANTI-V), which allows to simultaneously evaluate the three attentional networks (alerting, orienting, executive) and directly measure the vigilance. A Group (ADHD, TDC) x Warning (present, absent) x Cue (valid, invalid, no-cue) x Congruency (congruent, incongruent) ANOVA on the mean reaction times (RTs) showed a significant Group x Warning x Congruency interaction. The results of the Group x Warning ANOVA on the conflict effect (RTs incongruent condition – RTs congruent condition) showed that ADHD children’s performance is similar to that shown by TDC group only when phasic alerting was increased by a warning tone (F(1,72)=13.34; p=.001; η2=.16). Furthermore, a decrease in the d’ sensitivity index (F(1,72)=4.02; p=.049; η2=.05) indicated a deteriorated vigilance performance of ADHD children compared to TDC group. These findings confirm our previous results, highlighting as ADHD children could present a prevalent disease in Alerting and Vigilance networks. This low arousal level might be responsible to the executive impairment shown by ADHD children. These findings could help to develop an ad hoc treatment for children with attentional deficits.