Emotional competence and deficits that may disrupt interpersonal interactions were evaluated in 28 adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 28 demographically equivalent controls. Participants completed tasks assessing affect recognition and experienced emotional intensity. Adults with ADHD performed worse in affect recognition than did adults without the disorder; however, the impairment was unrelated to gross perceptual processes, fundamental abilities in facial recognition, or attentional aspects of affect perception. Moreover, intensity of experienced emotion moderated affect recognition: Among controls, experienced emotion facilitated affect recognition. Among adults with ADHD, who reported significantly greater intensity, experienced emotion was inversely related to affect recognition. Results are consistent with theories of ADHD as a deficit in behavioral inhibition; yet, results may merely reflect a constellation of deficits associated with the disorder.
Social and emotional competence were evaluated using self-report and behavioral measures in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and controls. Adults with ADHD viewed themselves as less socially competent but more sensitive toward violations of social norms than controls. Films depicting emotional interactions were used to assess linguistic properties of free recall and perceived emotional intensity. Although adults with ADHD used more words to describe the scenes, they used fewer emotion-related words, despite rating the emotions depicted as more intense than did controls. In contrast, no group differences for words depicting social or cognitive processes were observed. Overall, adults with ADHD appear more aware of their problems in social versus emotional skills. Findings may have implications for improving the psychosocial functioning of these adults.
1) Alcohol-related problems were common in this setting, 2) The AUDIT had a high sensitivity and a high specificity for detection of current alcohol problems in this setting, but it failed to detect patients with only past histories of alcohol problems. 3) The AUDIT performed significantly better than did the physicians in detecting alcohol problems. 4) The addition of an assessment of past alcohol use to supplement information from the AUDIT would appear to represent a promising screening strategy worthy of further investigation.
The present study examined the executive abilities of 35 adults diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivily Disorder (ADHD) and 32 adults without the disorder (n = 67) who were equivalent in age, gender, years of education, and Full Scale IQ. The ADHD group performed significantly worse on Stroop Color-Word (eta(2) =.18) and Interference (eta( 2) =.08), as well as time to complete Trails B (eta(2) =.08) than the controls (all ps <. 05). Analysis of Design Fluency indicated that the ADHD group committed more perseverative (eta(2) =.06) and non-perseverative (eta(2) =.12) errors than did controls; however, novel output was equivalent for the groups. No group differences were observed on tests measuring cognitive initiation, abstract thinking, or working memory (all ps >.30; eta(2) =.00-.01). The distributions of WCST variables showed severe skew associated with high-functioning performance on the test among both groups. The pattern of results suggests the presence of specific deficits in response inhibition, with intact abilities in other cognitive domains, such as primary verbal and visuospatial skills. These findings are consistent with the literature on neuropsychological deficits among children with ADHD. That persons with ADHD present a primary deficit of behavioral inhibition supports Barkley's (1997) theory of ADHD, as opposed to theories by Denckla (1996) and Roberts and Pennington (1996) that emphasize intention and working memory.
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