The ability of the hyperactive child to maintain attention on three tasks was examined. One of the tasks, a Choice Reaction Time Task, measured attention for brief periods, while the other two measured sustained attention. Of the latter two, one was an experimenterpaced task(the Continuous Performance Test) and the other a self-paced task(the SeriaI Reaction Task) .It was found that the hyperactive children were no different from the normal controls in their ability to direct their attention for brief periods. They were however, significantly inferior to uhe controls in their ability to sustain attention, particularly on the experimenter-paced task. The effect of the stimulant drug methylphenidate was evaluated and found to be effective in improving performance on aIl three tests. Implications of these findings for the education of hyperactive children were discussed.

A LARGE number of descriptive articles have appeared in recent years on three rather general and vaguely defined childhood syndromes. These include hyperactivity or the hyperkinetic syndrome, minimal brain dysfunction, and learning disabilities (Clements and Peters, 1962;Eisenberg, 1966; Laufer, Denhoffand Solomons, 1957;Paine 1962; Werry, Weiss, and Douglas, 1964). Despite the variety of labels, similar behavioural descriptions often emerge, the most common being distractibility, low frustration, tolerance, short attention span, inability to sit still, and school failure. These children generally do not learn efficiently, despite average or above average intelligence. This problem is often accompanied by difficult behaviour both at home and at school and thus frequently results in referral to a child guidance clinic in the early school years.Since these symptoms often occur together, there has been a tendency to use the above diagnostic labels interchangeably. For example, a child who is having difficulty in paying attention and learning to read may be diagnosed as hyperactive, minimally brain damaged, or learning disabled depending on the bias of the diagnostician. Many authors assume that these behaviours must co-vary. Thus a child who is overactive and distractible is often assumed to have conceptual and perceptual-motor difficulties (Clements and Peters, 1962). Similarly, people who write about learning disabilities tend to assume that such children are hyperactive and distractibile (McCarthy and McCarthy, 1969;Paine, 1962). However, there have been few attempts to define specific behavioural syndromes and then to study the kinds of learning deficiencies which accompany each syndrome.We have been attempting to delineate more clearly the behavioural abnormalities and learning characteristics of children who have been diagnosed as hyperactive or hyperkinetic. Our basic strategy has been to select a core behavioural symptom, that of excessive activity, and to study the cognitive problems of children diagnosed as hyperactive. A second goal has been to investigate the effects of the energizing drugs on the cognitive performance of these children. Thus, we have been asking two basic questions. First, when hyperactive children are compared with normal children what specific cognitive and learning deficits emerge? Second, are the energizing drugs, which seem often to alleviate the behavioural symptoms displayed by hyperactive children (Millichap and Boldrey, 1967;Sainz, 1966), also successful in alleviating the cognitive and learning problems delineated by the hyperactive-normal comparisons ?Thus far, the research has produced considerable evidence that our hyperactive

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