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PubMed2005

Sustained attention and response inhibition in young children at risk for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Studies of school-aged children, adolescents, and adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have variably shown ADHD-related impairment in both inhibitory control and sustained attention. However, few studies have examined ADHD-associated patterns of performance on these tasks among younger children (below age 7 years). METHODS: A combined continuous performance test and go/no-go task (CPT/GNG) and the Day-Night Stroop Task (DNST) were administered to an ethnically diverse sample of 3.44- to 6.95-year-old children rated by parents and teachers as being either high risk or low risk for ADHD. All children performed the DNST (N = 71) and a subset of the sample (N = 44) performed the CPT/GNG. Analyses assessed task validity as well as the effects of age and risk status. RESULTS: Significant main effects for age and risk status were found on all tasks. In addition, age x condition interactions were found for the CPT and DNST, which suggest that the tasks were sensitive to age-related changes in sustained attention and inhibitory control respectively. No significant risk status x condition interactions were found, suggesting that young children at risk for ADHD do not exhibit specific deficits in either inhibitory control or sustained attention. The most consistent effect related to risk status across tasks was the greater number of errors and longer and more variable reaction times on the part of children at risk for ADHD irrespective of condition. CONCLUSIONS: ADHD-associated decrements in performance on these tasks appear to be attributable either to generalized behavioral dysregulation or poor state regulation rather than to deficient inhibitory control.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2001

Neurocognitive problems in attention deficit disorder. Alternative concepts and evidence for impairment in inhibition of selective attention.

The critical neurocognitive components of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) remain controversial, despite extensive research to disclose the essential cognitive components of this disorder. We propose to organize this research into three types of cognitive mechanisms while demonstrating the consistencies and inconsistencies in each: studies of response inhibition, of executive function, and of attentional inhibition. We also present the results of cluster analyses of a group (n = 25) of narrowly selected adult patients with childhood onset of ADHD, reveal three subtypes of ADHD, and argue that the only evidence of a general cognitive deficit is found in tests of selective attention. Finally, we provide the results of exploratory studies of selective attention for perception and for semantic memories. The data suggest that the cognitive disinhibition of ADHD is found in semantic recognition, but not in visuoperceptual recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

[Brief video-assisted observation of visual attention, facial expression, and motor skills for diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)].

Can video assisted observation of visual attention, facial expression and motor skills contribute to the diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? 20 children from 6 to 10 years of age, diagnosed for ADHD following the DSM-IV criteria, and an age and sex matched control group of 20 children with harmless upper airway infections were filmed during 3 minutes playing cards with their mothers and 7 minutes of oral arithmetic exercises. Two persons were trained for eight hours in recognizing 22 signs for visual attention loss, alterated facial expression like oversized and sustained smile and abnormal motor skills in ADHD-patient videos. Then they viewed minutes 2 and 3 and 3 and 4 of the 40 children in a randomized sequence and scored the signs. 8 of the 22 signs showed high (r > .75) and 9 showed medium (r > .6) interrater correlations. The presence of signs in the ADHD and in the control group was highly significantly different (a = 0.01, U-Test of Mann and Whitney) for 10 of the 22 signs and significantly different for other 4 signs (a = 0.05). The four field table comparison between the frequency of the signs showed correct positioning in 80% of all cases. The loss of visual attention was the most frequent sign in ADHD children. The signs of alterated facial expression were also among the highly correlated signs. These are used by us to find the individual dose for stimulant medication.

Attention↗
PubMed2004

[A preliminary study on the attentional networks of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficiency of the three attentional networks in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHODS: Subjects were 25 children, aged 7 to 12 years, with DSM-IV ADHD and 25 non-ADHD controls matched by age, sex and IQ. Attentional networks tests were performed in all the subjects on an IBM compatible computer. RESULTS: No differences were found between the ADHD children and the normal controls in alerting and orienting effects. However, ADHD children had a significantly larger executive control effect than their normal counterparts. The general accuracy of the ADHD children was significantly lower than that of the normal controls. CONCLUSION: ADHD children may have impairments in their executive control network of attention.

Attention↗
PubMed1998

Clinical utility of the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA) in the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Ability of the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA) to distinguish between referred children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other (OTHER) clinical diagnoses were studied. The ADHD group differed from the OTHER group on TOVA variables and most measures from the Revised Conners Teacher Rating Scale (RCTRS) and ADD-H Comprehensive Teacher's Rating Scale (ACTeRS). The criteria of any one TOVA variable > 1.5 standard deviations from age and sex adjusted means correctly identified 80% of the sample with attention deficit disorders and 72% of the sample without attention deficit disorder. Cases misclassified by teacher ratings were often correctly classified by the TOVA and conversely. The TOVA makes a unique and important contribution to diagnostic evaluations.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗
PubMed1998

Visual attention in cirrhotic patients: a study on covert visual attention orienting.

Attentional dysfunction, which influences overall cognitive productivity, is not well characterized in cirrhotic patients. The aim of this study was to clarify the features of covert visual attention orienting in cirrhotics without overt hepatic encephalopathy. One hundred consecutive cirrhotic patients and 40 controls were enrolled. Visual covert attention orienting was assessed by the Posner test, which evaluates the effect of a cue on visual reaction times. Patients were characterized by the number connection test (NCT) and electroencephalographic (EEG) spectral analysis. The severity of liver disease was graded using standard laboratory parameters and the Child-Pugh's classification. Fifty-five psychometric and EEG evaluations were performed in the follow-up of 17 patients to assess the relationship between the variations of psychometric and neurophysiological findings. NCT and quantified-EEG parameters (altered in 19% and 40% of cirrhotic patients, respectively) were linked to each other and to the severity of liver disease. The Posner test showed a delay of visual reaction times in class B-C cirrhotic patients. Reaction times were correlated with ammonia and EEG parameters. The effect of the cue was higher in cirrhotic patients than in controls, particularly in the invalid position. This study suggests that cirrhotic patients have a reduced activity rate and reduced capacity to disengage attention previously focused on a cue. Such alterations are linked to NCT and EEG findings.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Attention deficits: is there a right hemisphere specialization for simple reaction time, sustained attention, and phasic alertness?

Impairments of attentional focus often are claimed to be associated with lesions of the right hemisphere. Although some studies comparing right- and left-brain-damaged patients have supported this idea, others have not found differences between these patients in various attention tasks. The present study was carried out in order to further investigate the putative role of the right hemisphere in a simple reaction time task, a sustained attention task, and a phasic alertness task. Subjects were 46 patients with right-hemisphere lesions and 37 patients with left-hemisphere lesions. Results showed no difference between right- and left-brain-damaged patients in simple reaction time, in speed of response over time (sustained attention), and in the capacity to prepare to an uncoming stimulus (phasic alertness). Future studies will have to use a more precise categorization of lesions than only right-versus left-brain damage.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Scopolamine attenuates the motor disruptions but not the attentional disturbances induced by haloperidol in a sustained attention task in the rat.

Rats were trained to perform a sustained attention task that required the subject to insert its head into a cylindrical "observation tunnel" and wait for the presentation of one of three spatially separated visual stimuli located on the upper portion of the tunnel circumference. Detection of a briefly (0.125 s) presented "correct" stimulus, followed by the rats' forward nose poke, resulted in access to a reinforcement dipper lifted through the orifice in the floor of the tunnel. Nose pokes to the two incorrect stimuli resulted in a 5-s time-out period. The task maximized attention and minimized movement requirements. Performance was characterized in terms of accuracy (i.e. errors of omission, and errors of commission), time on task, and latency to respond to the stimuli (i.e., reaction time). Haloperidol (0.04, 0.08, and 0.16 mg/kg) increased errors of omission and reaction time. However, lack of significant correlations between these two measures suggested that attentional accuracy may be independent of motor slowing produced by this neuroleptic. Scopolamine (0.2 mg/kg) alone increased both errors of omission and commission, but did not affect reaction time to correct stimuli. The sustained attention task as implemented here may be useful in the simultaneous study of classical neuroleptics desirable and undesirable CNS effects.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Biasing the brain's attentional set: II. effects of selective intersensory attentional deployments on subsequent sensory processing.

This study used high-density mapping of human event-related potentials to examine the brain activity associated with selective information processing when subjects were cued on a trial-by-trial basis to perform a discrimination in either the visual or auditory modality. On each trial, word-cues (S1) instructed subjects to attend to features within one sensory-modality of an impending compound auditory-visual stimulus (S2) that arrived approximately 1-second following the cue. Subjects made a discrimination within the cued modality of the S2 stimulus. The spatio-temporal patterns of activity in response to the compound S2 stimulus were examined as a function of the sensory modality being attended. The earliest effects of intersensory attention on visual processing were seen subsequent to the initial activation of visual cortex, beginning at 80 ms and continuing into the P1 and N1 components of the visual ERP. The scalp-topography of this earliest modulation was consistent with modulation of activity in ventral visual stream areas. Thus, the locus of effects on visual S2 processing differed from the anticipatory parieto-occipital biasing activity that preceded S2 presentation. This pattern of effects strongly suggests that the anticipatory activity (following the cue) associated with sustaining the focus of attention during intersensory attention, at least in the context of this paradigm, does not operate as a simple gain mechanism in early visual sensory areas. Rather, attentional biasing can operate through a higher-order process whereby parieto-occipital cortices influence the subsequent flow of visual processing in the ventral stream.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2001

Orienting of visual attention in dyslexia: evidence for asymmetric hemispheric control of attention.

The control of attentional orienting was studied in children with specific reading disorder (SRD) or dyslexia, and it was compared with that of normal readers. We used the covert orienting paradigm to measure subjects' reaction times for target detection both in valid and invalid cue conditions, either in the left or in the right visual fields. In experiment 1, we investigated exogenous orienting. The cue consisted of a peripheral abrupt onset and the cue-target delay was 350 ms. As compared with normal readers, in dyslexics the cue effect was absent in the right visual field, whereas in the left visual field a greater cue effect was observed. No visual field asymmetry was found in normal readers. In experiment 2, we investigated endogenous orienting. The cue was shown centrally and the cue-target delay was 750 ms. In dyslexics and normal readers, orienting of attention was present in both visual fields. However, in the invalid condition, dyslexic children showed significantly slower reaction times in the left visual field than in the right visual field. These results were interpreted as being due to an asymmetric control of visual spatial attention, possibly related with a posterior attention mechanism deficit in the right parietal cortex and/or an interhemispheric dysfunction and/or an impairment of cerebellar functions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Does attention impair temporal discrimination? Examining non-attentional accounts.

Recently, Yeshurun and Levy (Psychol Sci 14:225-231, 2003) have provided evidence for the notion that visual attention impairs the temporal resolution of the visual system. Specifically, the detection of a temporal gap within a visual stimulus was impaired when a cue directed attention towards the spatial location of the stimulus. As this negative cueing effect is important to constrain theories about visual attention, we further investigated this novel effect and assessed whether it truly reflects an attentional effect. Experiment 1 examines whether the negative cueing effect is due to local temporal interference, and Experiments 2 and 3 investigate whether it reflects a luminance confound. The complete pattern of results argues against these alternatives and thus further strengthens the conclusion of Yeshurun and Levy (Psychol Sci 14: 225-231, 2003).

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Covert orientation of visual attention in Parkinson's disease: an impairment in the maintenance of attention.

Covert orientation of attention was studied in a group of patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and compared to a matched control group using a cued reaction time task which measured disengagement, covert movement and engagement of attention. Parkinson patients had an increased response latency and disengaged from attended locations more readily than controls. This impairment in the maintenance of attention in Parkinson's disease was comparable to that produced in a previous study by pharmacological blockade of brain catecholamines in normal subjects. It is suggested that an impairment in the maintenance of oriented attention may underlie some of the cognitive deficits reported in Parkinson's disease.

Aged↗
PubMed2006

Manual response preparation and saccade programming are linked to attention shifts: ERP evidence for covert attentional orienting and spatially specific modulations of visual processing.

The premotor theory of attention claims that attentional shifts are triggered during response programming, regardless of which response modality is involved. To investigate this claim, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants covertly prepared a left or right response, as indicated by a precue presented at the beginning of each trial. Cues signalled a left or right eye movement in the saccade task, and a left or right manual response in the manual task. The cued response had to be executed or withheld following the presentation of a Go/Nogo stimulus. Although there were systematic differences between ERPs triggered during covert manual and saccade preparation, lateralised ERP components sensitive to the direction of a cued response were very similar for both tasks, and also similar to the components previously found during cued shifts of endogenous spatial attention. This is consistent with the claim that the control of attention and of covert response preparation are closely linked. N1 components triggered by task-irrelevant visual probes presented during the covert response preparation interval were enhanced when these probes were presented close to cued response hand in the manual task, and at the saccade target location in the saccade task. This demonstrates that both manual and saccade preparation result in spatially specific modulations of visual processing, in line with the predictions of the premotor theory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Two-object attentional interference depends on attentional set.

In this study, we explored the influence of an irrelevant translational event on the automatic capture of attention to one of two superimposed surfaces defined by transparent motion. The results showed that an irrelevant translation on one surface did not automatically capture the subjects' attention if the attentional resources have been endogenously allocated on the other surface. Moreover, the reduction in the motion-onset component of the event-related potential observed in trials where the irrelevant event affected the uncued surface supports the existence of a top-down control of early sensorial processing in this paradigm. This study provides further evidence of the interaction of stimulus-driven and goal-directed mechanisms in the control of visual attention.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Spatial attention and object-based attention: a comparison within a single task.

There is now much experimental evidence supporting the idea that visual attention can be deployed in at least two ways: one space-based and other object-based. However, it is not clear whether space- and object-based attention work in an integrated way within the visual system. In this article, we present two experiments in which we compare both components of attention within a cueing paradigm. Participants had to discriminate the orientation of a line that appeared within one of four moving circles, differing in colour. A cue appearing close to one of the four circles indicated the location or circle where the target stimulus was likely to appear. Spatial and object cueing effects were observed: responses were faster when target appeared either at the precued location or within the precued object. In addition, the object-cueing effect occurred only when the cue was spatially invalid and not when it was spatially valid. These results suggest that object- and space-based attention interact, with selection by location being primary over object-based selection.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Attention response functions: characterizing brain areas using fMRI activation during parametric variations of attentional load.

We derived attention response functions for different cortical areas by plotting neural activity (measured by fMRI) as a function of attentional load in a visual tracking task. In many parietal and frontal cortical areas, activation increased with load over the entire range of loads tested, suggesting that these areas are directly involved in attentional processes. However, in other areas (FEF and parietal area 7), strong activation was observed even at the lowest attentional load (compared to a passive baseline using identical stimuli), but little or no additional activation was seen with increasing load. These latter areas appear to play a different role, perhaps supporting task-relevant functions that do not vary with load, such as the suppression of eye movements.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Sensation seeking and selective attention: focused and divided attention on a dichotic listening task.

Differences in selective attention as a function of sensation seeking, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism were examined in 108 undergraduates using a dichotic listening task. Dependent measures included shadowing performance, reaction times to a secondary light task, target detection, and recall. The results suggested that high sensation seekers have better focused attention than low sensation seekers, and these effects were strongest on the 1st trials of the shadowing tasks. High sensation seekers did not attend differently than low sensation seekers to words related to their interests (sexual, violent, or drug related). Extraversion was associated with greater recall of these kinds of words, although there were no overall differences in selective attention as a function of Eysenck's dimensions. The role of arousal in personality and attention is discussed, particularly in regard to the response of sensation seekers to task novelty.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

The time course of competition for attention: attention is initially labile.

Competition for attention between 2 written words was investigated by presenting the words briefly in a single stream of distractors (Experiment 1) or in different streams (Experiment 2-6), using rapid serial visual presentation at 53 ms/item. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was varied from 0 to 213 ms. At all SOAs there was strong competition, but which word was more likely to be reported shifted markedly with SOA. At SOAs in the range of 13-53 ms the second word was more likely to be reported, but at 213 ms, the advantage switched to the first word, as in the attentional blink. A 2-stage competition model of attention is proposed in which attention to a detected target is labile in Stage 1. Stage 1 ends when one target is identified, initiating a serial Stage 2 process of consolidation of that target.

Analysis of Variance↗