Dextroamphetamine and placebo practice effects on selective attention in hyperactive children

Abstract

Three groups of boys referred to a hospital study unit for evaluation of hyperactive behavior were tested on a classification task involving selective attention while on either dextroamphetamine (D) or placebo (P). In two sessions, groups had D first, P second (DP), or PD, or PP. Amphetamine reduces a response times in general and reduces interference due to orthogonally varying irrelevant information. Practice while on placebo improves performance in a subsequent placebo session. Practice while on amphetamine does not, however, improve performance in the subsequent session on placebo. Assessment of the extent of the drug-state-related practice effect is necessary for evaluation of long-term benefits of dextroamphetamine therapy in these children.

Hyperactivity, drugs and attention deficit

“…It is, of course, in the processing of the peripheral stimuli that the hyperactive child has greatest difficulty because of their apparent inability to exclude irrelevant events, or handle two simultaneous stimuli (Butter & Lapierre, 1974). The present findings confirm the conclusion that it is in the control of attention that the child's difficulty lies, and in particular in selecting the relevant, salient stimuli for further processing (Fisher, 1978). If anything, these findings suggest that catecholamine potentiating drugs increase performance .by inducing greater efficiency in the active, cognitive control systems that modulate the degree to which a child can attend to incidental stimuli.…”

“…In conclusion, despite our evidence that long-term performance is assisted by the drugs, particularly for items that are not highly salient, this final finding must be taken into account in assessing the benefit of therapy. When the therapy is discontinued memory is disrupted for what has been learned (Fisher, 1978).…”

“…Some recent research has specifically looked at selective attention effects in this area. Fisher (1978) tested three groups of boys in a classification task involving one or two stimuli and found amphetamine not only improved response time but reduced interference from irrelevant stimulus information. Thurston et al (1979) showed in a task employing central and incidental stimuli that children in the drug condition recalled more central and fewer incidental stimuli, presumably due to the drug narrowing attention.…”

Multiple sources of attentional dysfunction in adults with Tourette's syndrome: Comparison with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder.

“…The UCLA DS-CPT, which can now run on virtually any IBM-compatible computer (K. H. Nuechterlein, personal, communication, June, & 24, 1993) may prove to be a valuable assessment measure that can be used to standardize CPT administration and the assessment of response inhibition processes across multiple testing sites. More research is also needed to determine the extent to which impaired selective attention deficits of the type found in ADHD (Fisher, 1978) are found in TS. A speeded classification task similar to that used by Fisher (1978) has been used by Pomerantz and his colleagues in over 100 studies of nonpatient controls (Pomerantz, Pristach, & Carson, 1989; Pomerantz, Carson, & Feldman, 1994), and has the potential to be adapted to a wide range of clinical settings.…”

Hyperactivity, drugs and attention to features in a story

“…Correspondingly it is in the processing of the incidental stimuli that the hyperactive child has greatest difficulty because of their apparent inability to exclude irrelevant events or handle the simultaneous dimensions of stimuli (Butler & Lapierre, 1974). Those findings suggest that it is in the control of attention that the child's difficulty lies and in particular in selecting the relevant, salient stimuli for further processing (Fisher, 1978). The present tests were not dissimilar to these earlier experiments that presented stimuli varying along two dimensions.…”