Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:40:04.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Automatic Processing of Duration in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2013

Hilary Gomes*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, City College, New York, New York Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, New York Department of Psychology, Queens College, Flushing, New York
Martin Duff
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, City College, New York, New York Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, New York
Adrianne Flores
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Queens College, Flushing, New York
Jeffrey M. Halperin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, New York Department of Psychology, Queens College, Flushing, New York
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to: Hilary Gomes, Department of Psychology, Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Blvd., Flushing, New York 11367. E-mail: hilary.gomes@gmail.com

Abstract

Individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often exhibit deficits in processing information about time. Most studies, however, have required participants to perform active tasks and consequently it is unclear if performance deficits are due to impaired processing of temporal information, attentional deficits, or to impairments at a later stage of decision-making. This study used mismatch negativity (MMN) to examine automatic processing of temporal information in children with ADHD. The sample consisted of 11 children with typical development (8 boys; mean age/SD = 9.3/0.6 years) and 12 with ADHD (10 boys; mean age/SD = 8.9/0.8 years). Using the MMN paradigm, responses to standards and four deviants (hard/easy frequency, hard/easy duration) were elicited during the same sequence. The children's ability to actively discriminate each deviant was also assessed. Both groups exhibited MMNs to all deviants suggesting successful automatic discrimination. Furthermore, amplitude and latency measures were roughly comparable across groups. No group differences were seen on the active discrimination task, but performance was worse for duration than for frequency deviants. These results suggest that children with ADHD are able to automatically process temporal information, so deficits reported in active discrimination paradigms are likely due to deficits in subjective perception or usage of temporal information. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–9)

Type
Research Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Speech and Hearing Association. (2005). Working group on auditory processing disorders: (Central) auditory processing disorders. Technical Report. Rockville, MD: American Speech and Hearing Association.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. Text Revision). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Press.Google Scholar
Barkley, R.A. (2006). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment. New York, NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Barkley, R.A., Koplowitz, S., Anderson, T., McMurray, M.B. (1997). Sense of time in children with ADHD: Effects of duration, distraction, and stimulant medication. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 3, 359369.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barry, R.J., Johnstone, S.J., Clarke, A.R. (2003). A review of electrophysiology in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: II. Event-related potentials. Clinical Neurophysiology, 114, 184198.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Castellanos, F.X., Lee, P.P., Sharp, W., Jeffries, N.O., Greenstein, D.K., Clasen, L.S., Rapoport, J.L. (2002). Developmental trajectories of brain volume abnormalities in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Journal of the America Medical Association, 288, 17401748.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Čeponienė, R., Cheour, M., Näätänen, R. (1998). Interstimulus interval and auditory event-related potentials in children: Evidence for multiple generators. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 108, 345354.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coull, J.T., Cheng, R.K., Meck, W.H. (2011). Neuroanatomical and neurochemical substrates of timing. Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews, 36, 325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cowan, N. (1984). On short and long auditory stores. Psychological Bulletin, 96, 341370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Droit-Volet, S., Meck, W.H., Penney, T.B. (2007). Sensory modulation and time perception in children and adults. Behavioural Processes, 74, 244250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupaul, G.J., Power, T.J., Anastopoulos, A.D., Reid, R. (1998). ADHD Rating Scale – IV: Checklists, norms, and clinical interpretation. New York, NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, M., Gomes, H., Gravel, J. (2008). Mismatch negativity in autistic and typically developing children. Journal of Autism and other Developmental Disorders, 38, 5271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durston, S., van Belle, J., de Zeeuw, P. (2011). Differentiating frontostriatal and fronto-cerebellar circuits in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 69, 11781184.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gautier, T., Droit-Volet, S. (2002). Attention and time estimation in 5- and 8- year old children: A dual task procedure. Behavioural Processes, 58, 5666.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gomes, H., Sussman, E., Ritter, W., Kurtzberg, D., Cowan, N., Vaughan, H.G. Jr. (1999). Electrophysiological evidence of developmental changes in the duration of auditory sensory memory. Developmental Psychology, 35, 294302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gooch, D., Snowling, M., Hulme, C. (2011). Time perception, phonological skills and executive function in children with dyslexia and/or ADHD symptoms. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 195203.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grimm, S., Schröger, E. (2007). The processing of frequency deviations within sounds: Evidence for the predictive nature of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) system. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 25, 241249.Google ScholarPubMed
Halperin, J.M., Schulz, K.P. (2006). Revisiting the role of the prefrontal cortex in the pathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 560581.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Healey, D.M., Miller, C.J., Castelli, K.L., Marks, D.J., Halperin, J.M. (2008). The impact of impairment criteria on rates of ADHD diagnoses in preschoolers. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 36, 771778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Himpel, S., Banaschewski, T., Grüttner, A., Becker, A., Heise, A., Uebel, H., Rammsayer, T. (2009). Duration discrimination in the range of milliseconds in children with ADHD and their unaffected siblings. Psychological Medicine, 39, 17451751.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huang, J., Yang, B.R., Zou, X.B., Jing, J., Pen, G., McAlonan, G.M., Chan, R.C. (2012). Temporal processing impairment in children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33, 538548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huttunen, T., Halonen, A., Kaartinen, J., Lyytinen, H. (2007). Does mismatch negativity show differences in reading disabled children as compared to normal children and children with attention deficit? Developmental Neuropsychology, 31, 453470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huttunen-Scott, T., Kaartinen, J., Tolvanen, A., Lyytinen, H. (2008). Mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by duration deviations in children with reading disorder, attention deficit, or both. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 69, 6977.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ito, M. (2005). Bases and implications of learning in the cerebellum – adaptive control and internal model mechanism. Progress in Brain Research, 148, 95109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaufman, J., Birmaher, B., Brent, D., Rao, U., Flynn, C., Moreci, P., Ryan, N. (1997). Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL): Initial reliability and validity data. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 980988.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kemner, C., Verbaten, M.N., Koelega, H.S., Buitelaar, J.K., van der Gaag, R.J., Camfferman, G., van Engeland, H. (1996). Event-related brain potentials in children with attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder: Effects of stimulus deviancy and task relevance in the visual and auditory modality. Biological Psychiatry, 40, 522534.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koziol, L.F., Budding, D.E., Chidekel, D. (2012). From movement to thought: Executive Function, embodied cognition, and the cerebellum. Cerebellum, 11, 505525.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kraus, N., McGee, T., Carrell, T.D., King, C., Tremblay, K., Nicol, T. (1995). Central auditory system plasticity associated with speech discrimination training. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 2532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, P.A., Miall, R.C. (2003). Distinct systems for automatic and cognitively controlled time measurement: Evidence from neuroimaging. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 13, 250255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luck, S.J. (2005). An introduction to the event-related potential technique. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mangels, J.A., Ivry, R.B., Shimizu, N. (1998). Dissociable contributions of the prefrontal and neocerebellar cortex time perception. Cognitive Brain Research, 7, 539.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moberget, T., Karns, C.M., Deouell, L.Y., Lindgren, M., Knight, R.T., Ivry, R.B. (2008). Detecting violations of sensory expectancies following cerebellar degeneration: A mismatch negativity study. Neuropsychologia, 46, 25692579.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Molholm, S., Gomes, H., Ritter, W. (2001). The detection of constancy amidst change: A dissociation of preattentive and intentional processes in children. Psychophysiology, 38, 969978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Näätänen, R., Paavilainen, P., Rinne, T., Alho, K. (2007). The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: A review. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118, 25442590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R., Schröger, E., Karakas, S., Tervaniemi, M., Paavilainen, P. (1993). Development of a memory trace for a complex sound in the human brain. Neuroreport, 4, 503506.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nakao, K., Treas, J. (1994). Updating occupational prestige and socioeconomic scores: How the new measures measure up. Sociological Methodology, 24, 172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oades, R.D., Dittmann-Balcar, A., Schepker, R., Eggers, C., Zerbin, D. (1996). Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) and mismatch negativity (MMN) in healthy children and those with attention-deficit or Tourette/tic symptoms. Biological Psychology, 43, 163185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plummer, C., Humphrey, N. (2009). Time perception in children with ADHD: The effects of task modality and duration. Child Neuropsychology, 15, 147162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radonovich, K.J., Mostofsky, S.H. (2004). Duration judgments in children with ADHD suggest deficient utilization of temporal information rather than general impairment in timing. Child Neuropsychology, 10, 162172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rammsayer, T.H. (1999). Neuropharmacological evidence for different timing mechanisms in humans. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 52B, 273286.Google Scholar
Rao, S.M., Mayer, A.R., Harrington, D.L. (2001). The evolution of brain activation during temporal processing. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 317323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rothenberger, A., Banaschewski, T., Heinrich, H., Moll, G.H., Schmidt, M.H., van't Klooster, B. (2000). Comorbidity in ADHD-children: Effects of coexisting conduct disorder or tic disorder on event-related brain potentials in an auditory selective-attention task. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 250, 101110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sawada, M., Iida, J., Ota, T., Negoro, H., Tanaka, S., Sadamatsu, M., Kishimoto, T. (2010). Effects of osmotic-release methylphenidate in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as measured by event-related potentials. Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 64, 491498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schall, U., Johnson, P., Tood, J., Ward, P.B., Michie, P.T. (2003). Functional neuroanatomy of auditory mismatch processing: An event-related fMRI study of duration-deviant oddballs. Neuroimage, 20, 729736.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tervaniemi, M., Ilvonen, T., Karma, K., Alho, K., Näätänen, R. (1997). The musical brain: Brain waves reveal the neurophysiological basis of musicality in human subjects. Neuroscience Letters, 226, 14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Toplak, M.E., Dockstader, C., Tannock, R. (2006). Temporal information processing in ADHD: Findings to date and new methods. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 151, 1529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Toplak, M.E., Rucklidge, J.J., Hetherington, R., John, S.C., Tannock, R. (2003). Time perception deficits in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comorbid reading difficulties in child and adolescent samples. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 888903.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winsberg, B.G., Javitt, D.C., Shanahan-Silipo, G. (1997). Electrophysiological Indices of information processing in methylphenidate responders. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 434445.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed