Sustained Attention in Hyperactive Children*

Abstract

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.

Attaining and maintaining preparation: A comparison of attention in hyperactive, normal, and disturbed control children

“…Generally, hyperactive children perform less well than normal controls. They make more false positive and fewer correct responses and have slower mean reaction times for correct responses (Sykes, Douglas, Weiss, & Minde, 1971;Sykes et al, 1973;Michael, Klorman, Salzman, Borgstedt, & Dainer, 1981;Nuechterlein, 1983;Rapoport et al, 1980). However, reported differences in performance between hyperactive and normal groups on any one version of the CPT, evident as a main effect of diagnostic group, are not necessarily attributable to inability to sustan attention.…”

“…The strongest support for the attention-deficit hypothesis comes from research into the performance of hyperactive children on attention-demanding laboratory tasks. Compared with normal children, they are more distractible (e.g., Ceci & Tishman, 1984) and impulsive (e.g., Campbell, 1974;Firestone & Martin, 1979) and, in particular, less able to sustain attention (e.g., Cohen & Douglas, 1972;Sykes, Douglas, & Morgenstern, 1973).…”

A Comparison Between Adults With Conduct Disorder And Normal Controls on a Continuous Performance Test: Differences in Impulsive Response Characteristics

“…Some have defined commission errors as any response to a nontarget stimulus and have suggested elevated frequency of these errors represents impulsive responding (O 'Dougherty, Nuechterlein, & Drew, 1984;Sykes, Douglas, Weis, & Minde, 1971). However, others disagree with the breadth of this interpretation (Halperin et aI., 1988(Halperin et aI., , 1991Sostek, Buchsbaum, & Rapoport, 1980;Sykes, Douglas, & Morgenstern, 1973;Wohlberg & Kornetsky, 1973) and define impulsive-type commission errors as a subset of all errors in which incomplete processing of a stimulus similar to the target leads to a rapid, but incorrect response. These more narrowly defined commission errors may be more indicative of impulsive behavior.…”

Validation of the Immediate and Delayed Memory Tasks in Hospitalized Adolescents with Disruptive Behavior Disorders

“…One example of this kind of technology is the Continuous Performance Test (CPT) that typically yields commission errors (responses made to stimuli other than the deSignated target stimulus), which are frequently interpreted as impulsive (Halperin, Wolf, Greenblatt, & Young, 1991;Halperin et aI., 1988;O'Dougherty, Nuechterlein, & Drew, 1984;Riccio, Reynolds, & Lowe, 2001 ;Sostek, Buchsbaum, & Rapoport, 1980;Sykes, Douglas, & Morgenstern, 1973;Sykes, Douglas, Weiss, & Minde, 1971;Wohlberg & Kornetsky, 1973). Validation studies of this type of CPT performance have generally focused on very young children or severely impaired patients, while studies testing higher functioning groups have commonly failed to find differences in commission error rates.…”