On Resource Strategy Limitations in Hyperactivity: Cognitive Impulsivity Reconsidered

Abstract

SUMMARY Overactive and distractible (hyperactives), normoactive and distractible, and normoactive and attentive (controls) children were administered a high‐speed visual search task. The display load was manipulated and all subjects were administered the task in three instruction conditions: speed, ‘normal’ and accuracy. Speed‐accuracy trade‐off curves indicated that the controls and distractibles conformed to the fast guess model, which relates speed and accuracy. Hyperactives partially conformed to this model. It is concluded that a structural process deficit is not indicated by these data in hyperactivity. Rather, the evidence suggests that a resource strategy defect may be characteristic of hyperactivity.

Neuropsychological functioning, motor speed, and language processing in boys with and without ADHD

“…All tasks were self-paced, maximizing the importance of speed rather than errors in detecting ADHD performance deficits (Sykes, Douglas, & Morganstern, 1973). Both "fast-accurate" and "slow-careful" instruction sets can reflect an ADHD deficit (Sergeant & Scholten, 1985).…”

“…Controlled linguistic response selection results in longer response organization times and may detect an ADHD deficit (de Sonneville, Njiokiktjien, & Bos, 1994), but use of this principle in neuropsychological assessment has not, to our knowledge, been undertaken. Indeed, language impairment may be best detected on self-paced tasks that vary with regard to degree of attention demand (de Sonneville et al, 1994) and instructional set (i.e., careful vs. fast; Sergeant & Scholten, 1985).…”

Sustained attention and response inhibition in boys with fragile X syndrome: Measures of continuous performance

“…All children practiced the task at least once and could practice two more times if needed. Because the literature has documented their importance, a number of factors were kept constant in the administration of the CPTs, including morning administration, the continued presence of an administrator, an emphasis on accuracy rather than speed, and up to three opportunities for the administrator to provide feedback [Davies and Davies, 1975;Ozolins and Anderson, 1980;O'Dougherty et al, 1984;Sergeant and Scholten, 1985;Draeger et al, 1986;Power, 1992;Ballard, 1996;Leark et al, 1999]. Although some of the children with FXS had limited verbal skills, they had sufficient receptive language skills to distinguish between the target and nontarget words.…”

Time perception deficits in attention‐deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and comorbid reading difficulties in child and adolescent samples

“…Also, a diverse array of findings from studies of cognitive processes involved in motor response control supports the hypothesis of impaired time perception in ADHD. Findings include: 1) deficits in working memory that are believed to play a major role in time perception; 2) adverse effects on task performance of either very brief or long delays between stimuli, and of temporal uncertainty; 3) production of slow and variable responses on tasks with a "fast" instruction set; 4) a high rate of premature responses in experimenter-paced tasks; and 5) impairments in timing motor output (e.g., Barkley et al, 1996;Karatekin & Asarnow, 1998;Mariani & Barkley, 1997;Rubia et al, 1999aRubia et al, , 1999bSergeant & Scholten, 1985;Sonuga-Barke et al, 1998;Zahn et al, 1991). Some recent findings from neuroimaging studies of ADHD have also reported structural anomalies in the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex (e.g., Berquin et al, 1998;Castellanos, 2001;Castellanos et al, 1996Castellanos et al, , 2001Mostofsky et al, 1998).…”