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Abstract

A paired-associate learning (PAL) test was administered to 22 community volunteers without disruptive disorders and 197 children (7.5-13.5 years-old) presenting with the inattentive and combined subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) either in combination with or without oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Participants were screened for learning disorders. In comparison to non-ADHD participants, children with ADHD achieved worse PAL and made errors rated as more acoustically and less semantically similar to the correct paired associates. These deficits were not related to hyperactivity-impulsivity or comorbid ODD. These results suggest that ADHD children are less competent at PAL and use less efficient learning strategies than their non-ADHD peers.

Risky decision-making in children with and without ADHD: A prospective study

“…Learning on this balloon condition across both children with and without ADHD is consistent with prior work on the BELT spanning ages 3 to 26 years (Humphreys et al, 2014, 2013; Humphreys, Telzer, et al, 2015) in which learning occurs nearly universally, likely because this condition has the lowest explosion point and therefore the quickest opportunity for feedback about the limits of this balloon condition. Despite evidence of exhibited impaired learning in ADHD observed in this task and other (Chang et al, 1999), there are clearly contexts in which children with ADHD use past experience to effectively guide subsequent decision-making. Previous work with explicit gambling paradigms suggest that, compared to children without ADHD, children with ADHD did not improve their associative learning across trials.…”