Evidence for an Error Monitoring Deficit in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

We studied error monitoring in ADHD and control children in a task requiring inhibition of a motor response. The extent of slowing following successful (stopped) and failed (nonstopped) inhibition was compared across groups. We also measured the time required to inhibit a response (stop signal reaction time, SSRT). Compared to controls, ADHD participants slowed less following nonstopped responses. Slowing did not vary with comorbid reading, oppositional, conduct or anxiety disorder, sex or ADHD subtype. Slowing after nonstopped responses was marginally, although significantly correlated with total ADHD symptoms and with age. ADHD participants had significantly longer SSRT than controls, but SSRT was not significantly correlated with slowing. The apparent deficit in error monitoring in ADHD and its independence from the inhibition deficit observed in ADHD has implications for executive control models of ADHD, performance problems associated with the disorder and for component theories of executive control.

Error monitoring in children with ADHD or reading disorder: An event-related potential study

“…Thus, the ERP results generally suggest that children and adults with ADHD have problems with error monitoring with the most consistent finding of a 7 reduced Pe amplitude, implying aberrant conscious evaluation of errors. Together with the finding of reduced or abnormal post-error slowing (e.g., Krusch et al, 1996;Schachar et al, 2004;Sergeant & van der Meere, 1988;Wiersema et al, 2005), these results suggest that a deficient error monitoring system may, at least partly, explain the deteriorated task performance in children with ADHD. Transferred to daily life, this could mean that they do not seem to learn from their mistakes because of deviant error monitoring processes that hamper them in adequately adjusting their behaviour (Groen et al, 2008).…”

“…Error monitoring is an executive control process that enables online detection of errors and subsequent adjustment of performance so as to increase future accuracy (Schachar et al, 2004). These processes are highly relevant in daily life as detection and future avoidance of errors are important parts of self-regulatory and goal-directed behaviour, necessary to flexibly adjust to internal and external needs (Ullsperger & Falkenstein, 2004) and to learn from previous behaviours (Garavan, Ross, Murphy, Roche, & Stein, 2002).…”

“…Therefore, it is not surprising that error monitoring has become an important research topic in ADHD. Since the first report by Sergeant and van der Meere (1988) and more recent reports by Schachar et al (2004) and Wiersema, van der Meere, and Roeyers (2005), that have injected new life into this research line, several papers have been published yielding somewhat inconsistent results.…”

Short-term aftereffects of response inhibition: Repetition priming or between-trial control adjustments?

“…First, an increase in response threshold should produce not only a lengthening of RT but also a concomitant reduction in error rate (Rabbitt, 1966). However, Schachar et al (2004) did not observe such a reduction in error rate (Rieger & Gauggel, 1999, did not report error rates for the different types of trials). Therefore, the failure to confirm this error-reduction prediction motivates a search for other mechanisms that can contribute to post-stop-signal slowing.…”

Dissociable Brain Mechanisms Underlying the Conscious and Unconscious Control of Behavior

“…Although not always observed (Emeric et al, 2007), participants tend to slow down after they failed to inhibit their response on a stop trial (Schachar et al, 2004;Rieger & Gauggel, 1999), an adaptive control mechanism referred to here as posterror slowing. Posterror slowing was measured by RTs on correct go-on trials immediately after failed stop trials compared with RTs on correct go-on trials immediately after correct go-on trials.…”