Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:30:48.435Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Examining predictors of reaction times in children with ADHD and normal controls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2009

JEFFERY N. EPSTEIN ,
MICHELLE E. HWANG ,
TANYA ANTONINI ,
JOSHUA M. LANGBERG ,
MEKIBIB ALTAYE  and
L. EUGENE ARNOLD
JEFFERY N. EPSTEIN*
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
MICHELLE E. HWANG
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
TANYA ANTONINI
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
JOSHUA M. LANGBERG
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
MEKIBIB ALTAYE
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
L. EUGENE ARNOLD
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Jeffery N. Epstein, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology, 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC 10006, Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039. E-mail: jeff.epstein@cchmc.org
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A microanalysis of task events in a common go/no-go task was completed to examine how task events impact individual reaction times. Predictors of long reaction times were analyzed to better understand increased intra-individual variability (IIV) among children with ADHD compared with normal controls. Sixty-five children with ADHD and 65 normal controls matched on gender, ethnicity, and age completed a go/no-go task. Children across both groups were slower before and after omission errors than all other trials. They were also slower on the trial before successfully inhibiting their response to no-go trials. Children with ADHD exhibited a pronounced slowing on trials prior to omission errors and trials prior to successful inhibitions compared with the normal control group. Pre-error slowing in children with ADHD may represent the beginning stages of attentional disengagement that subsequently results in the absence of responding (i.e., errors of omission or successful inhibition). While these event-related increases in reaction time explain some of the increased IIV observed in children with ADHD, the removal of these trials did not remove the pronounced between-group differences in IIV, suggesting that additional unmeasured processes are contributing to IIV in children with ADHD. (JINS, 2010, 16, 138–147.)

Keywords

Response variabilityIntra-individualPost-error slowingPre-error slowingAttentionDisengagement
Type
Research Articles
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 138 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2009

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

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (IV-Text Revision). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Andreou, P., Neale, B.M., Chen, W., Christiansen, H., Gabriels, I., Heise, A., et al. . (2007). Reaction time performance in ADHD: Improvement under fast-incentive condition and familial effects. Psychological Medicine, 1–13.Google ScholarPubMed
Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Methodological), 57, 289–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castellanos, F.X., Sonuga-Barke, E.J., Scheres, A., Di Martino, A., Hyde, C., Walters, J.R., et al. . (2005). Varieties of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-related intra-individual variability. Biological Psychiatry, 57, 1416–1423.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheyne, J.A., Solman, G.J., Carriere, J.S., & Smilek, D. (2009). Anatomy of an error: A bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors. Cognition, 111, 98–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Conners, C.K. (1994). The Conners Continuous Performance Test. Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health Systems, Inc.Google Scholar
Corkum, P.V., & Siegel, L.S. (1993). Is the continuous performance task a valuable research tool for use with children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 34, 1217–1239.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Durston, S., Tottenham, N.T., Thomas, K.M., Davidson, M.C., Eigsti, I.M., Yang, Y., et al. . (2003). Differential patterns of striatal activation in young children with and without ADHD. Biological Psychiatry, 53, 871–878.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epstein, J.N., Conners, C.K., Hervey, A.S., Tonev, S.T., Arnold, L.E., Abikoff, H.B., et al. . (2006). Assessing medication effects in the MTA study using neuropsychological outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 446–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epstein, J.N., Erkanli, A., Conners, C.K., Klaric, J., Costello, J.E., & Angold, A. (2003). Relations between continuous performance test performance measures and ADHD behaviors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 31, 543–554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gehring, W.J., Goss, B., Coles, M.G.H., Meyer, D.E., & Donchin, E. (1993). A neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychological Science, 4, 385–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilden, D.L., & Hancock, H. (2007). Response variability in attention deficit disorders. Psychological Science, 18, 796–802.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hervey, A.S., Epstein, J.N., & Curry, J.F. (2004). The neuropsychology of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analytic review. Neuropsychology, 18, 485–503.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hervey, A.S., Epstein, J.N., Curry, J.F., Tonev, S., Arnold, L.E., Conners, C.K., et al. . (2006). Reaction time distribution analysis of neuropsychological performance in an ADHD sample. Child Neuropsychology, 12, 125–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurtig, T., Ebeling, H., Taanila, A., Miettunen, J., Smalley, S.L., McGough, J.J., et al. . (2007). ADHD symptoms and subtypes: Relationship between childhood and adolescent symptoms. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 46, 1605–1613.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klein, C., Wendling, K., Huettner, P., Ruder, H., Peper, M., Klein, C., et al. . (2006). Intra-subject variability in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 60, 1088–1097.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krusch, D.A., Klorman, R., Brumaghim, J.T., Fitzpatrick, P.A., Borgstedt, A.D., & Strauss, J. (1996). Methylphenidate slows reactions of children with attention deficit disorder during and after an error. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 24, 633–650.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leth-Steensen, C., Elbaz, Z.K., & Douglas, V.I. (2000). Mean response times, variability, and skew in the responding of ADHD children: A response time distributional approach. Acta Psychologica, 104, 167–190.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luce, R.D. (1986). Response Times: Their Role in Inferring Elementary Mental Organization. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Manly, T., Robertson, I.H., Galloway, M., & Hawkins, K. (1999). The absent mind: Further investigations of sustained attention to response. Neuropsychologia, 37, 661–670.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MTA Cooperative Group. (2004). National Institute of Mental Health Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD follow-up: 24-month outcomes of treatment strategies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Pediatrics, 113, 754–761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oosterlaan, J., Logan, G.D., & Sergeant, J.A. (1998). Response inhibition in AD/HD, CD, comorbid AD/HD + CD, anxious, and control children: A meta-analysis of studies with the stop task. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 39, 411–425.Google ScholarPubMed
Rabbitt, P.M.A. (1966). Errors and error correction in choice reaction tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71, 264–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabbitt, P.M.A. (1968). Repetition effects and signal classification strategies in serial choice-response tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 20, 232–240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rieger, M., & Gauggel, S. (1999). Inhibitory after-effects in the stop signal paradigm. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 509–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, V.A., Oades, R.D., Tannock, R., Killeen, P.R., Auerbach, J.G., Johansen, E.B., et al. . (2006). Response variability in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A neuronal and glial energetics hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 2, 30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schachar, R.J., Chen, S., Logan, G.D., Ornstein, T.J., Crosbie, J., Ickowicz, A., et al. . (2004). Evidence for an error monitoring deficit in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 32, 285–293.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schachar, R., Tannock, R., Marriott, M., & Logan, G. (1995). Deficient inhibitory control in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 23, 411–437.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sergeant, J.A., & van der Meere, J. (1988). What happens after a hyperactive child commits an error? Psychiatry Research, 24, 157–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaffer, D., Fisher, P., Lucas, C.P., Dulcan, M.K., & Schwab-Stone, M.E. (2000). NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version IV (NIMH DISC-IV): Description, differences from previous versions, and reliability of some common diagnoses. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39, 28–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smallwood, J.M., Baracaia, S.F., Lowe, M., & Obonsawin, M. (2003). Task unrelated thought whilst encoding information. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 452–484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smallwood, J.M., Davies, J.B., Heim, D., Finnigan, F., Sudberry, M., O’Connor, R., et al. . (2004). Subjective experience and the attentional lapse: Task engagement and disengagement during sustained attention. Consciousness and Cognition, 13, 657–690.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smallwood, J.M., McSpadden, M., Luus, B., & Schooler, J.W. (2008). Segmenting the stream of consciousness: The psychological correlates of temporal structures in the time series data of a continuous performance test. Brain and Cognition, 66, 50–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, S.V., Hawk, L.W. Jr, Richards, J.B., Shiels, K., Pelham, W.E., & Waxmonsky, J.G. (2009). Stimulant treatment reduces lapses in attention among children with ADHD: The effects of methylphenidate on intra-individual response time distributions. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 805–816.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swanson, J.M. (1992). School Based Assessments and Interventions for ADD Students. Irvine, CA: KC Publishing.Google Scholar
Ulrich, R., & Miller, J. (1994). Effects of truncation on reaction time analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 34–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Willcutt, E.G., Doyle, A.E., Nigg, J.T., Faraone, S.V., & Pennington, B.F. (2005). Validity of the executive function theory of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analytic review. Biological Psychiatry, 57, 1336–1346.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed