Visual Sustained Attention in a Child Psychiatric Population

Swaab, Hanna; Sonneville, Leo de; Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy; Gielen, Anneke; Buitelaar, Jan K.; Engeland, Hermán van

doi:10.1097/00004583-200005000-00020

Cited by 85 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Post-error slowing is thought to represent adjustment of performance strategies in the face of an error. Post-error slowing is often found in the RT-literature (e.g, Ridderinkhof, 2002), and there is evidence that children with ADHD fail to adjust their strategy, relative to controls (e.g., Swaab-Barneveld et al,2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

Response Interference and Working Memory in 12-Year-Old Children

Stins

Polderman

Boomsma

et al. 2005

Child Neuropsychology

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A group of 69 12-year-old children performed three well-known response interference tasks: the Stroop task, the Eriksen flanker task, and the Simon task. Individual differences in accuracy and speed correlated across the tasks. However, there was no correlation between the interference effects on these three tasks. Stroop interference, but not the Simon or flanker effect, was correlated with working memory capacity, as obtained from the WISC-R. These results may help clarify the nature of ADHD, which is characterized by problems with response interference. Keywords: Stroop, Simon, Flanker, WISC, attention deficitIn order to select and execute an appropriate response, humans often have to ignore certain information that is strongly linked to another, yet inappropriate, response. This ability to deal with sources of conflict is known as interference control, and underlies our ability to achieve long-term goals, despite the presence of sources of distraction in the environment. Interference control is thought to be mediated, in part, by working memory (e.g., de Fockert, Rees, Frith, & Lavie, 2001). For some people inadequate interference control and working memory problems may cause significant problems in their daily lives, and is generally thought to underlie neuropsychological deficits such as observed in attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a common childhood disorder (e.g., Barkley, 1997).Neuropsychological studies and clinical investigations often make use of tasks that are designed to index response interference. Often used tasks are the Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. In both tasks, the subject is presented with a stimulus that simultaneously activates two conflicting response channels; one response is activated by the instructions, whereas the other response is activated by elements in the array that strongly invite an alternative-yet incorrect-response. For example, in the Color WORD Stroop task (Stroop, 1935), the instruction is to attend to the color of the ink in which a word is printed and name this color aloud. At the same time, the printed words may also read certain color names that are different from the color of the ink in which it is printed. As has been observed on numerous occasions, there is a strong tendency to respond to the This research was financially supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific content of the word, and not to the ink color. This is evidenced by an increase in response time and a decrease in accuracy relative to a neutral control condition. Moreover, this pattern of response interference seems to be exaggerated in ADHD. For example, Carter et al. (1995; see also Salo, Henik, and Robertson, 2001) showed that children with ADHD have more difficulty suppressing the response associated with the word content than controls, as evidenced by the reaction time (RT) profiles of the two groups.In a similar vein, in the Eriksen flanker task subjects have to respond to one element in a stimulus array and ignore other elements in the array that desi...

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confidence: 99%

Response Interference and Working Memory in 12-Year-Old Children

Stins

Polderman

Boomsma

et al. 2005

Child Neuropsychology

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“…Lack of selective attention and working memory skills is often seen in children with ADHD (e.g., Barkley, 1997;Swaab-Barneveld, 1998), and it is important to determine the genetic and environmental contributions to these skills in young children. If it can be established that performance on tasks of selective attention and working memory is heritable, then these tasks may be used as a basis to further refine the ADHD cognitive endophenotypes.…”

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Heritability of Selective Attention and Working Memory in Preschoolers

et al. 2005

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In this study aspects of selective attention and working memory were tested in a large sample of nearly 6-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs, using a computerized test battery (Amsterdam Neuropsychological tasks). In the selective attention task the presence of a foil signal (target signal at an irrelevant location) resulted in more false alarms than a non-target signal. In the working memory task an increase in memory load lead to an increase in response times and errors. We analyzed variations in absolute performance parameters (overall speed and accuracy) and relative performance parameters (increase in errors and/or reaction time). The results showed clear familial resemblances on performance. It proved difficult to ascribe these effects to shared genes or to shared environment. An exception was memory search rate, which was clearly heritable.KEY WORDS: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; endophenotypes; selective attention; twin study; working memory.In order to study the genetics of childhood psychopathologies such as ADHD it is of great importance to identify endophenotypes that predict the liability of the pathology of interest. The advantage of an endophenotypic approach to study complex disorders (or complex traits, such as IQ) is that it allows the identification of genes that by themselves make only a small contribution to the trait under study. A minimal requirement for suitable endophenotypes is that they yield continuously quantifiable measures; another requirement is that endophenotypes are anchored in neuroscience (e.g., Castellanos andTannock, 2002, andBoomsma, 2001). Indeed, researchers of psychopathologies often make use of neurocognitive tasks that are known to activate particular brain systems, and that yield quantitative performance measures, usually reaction times and percentage of errors. For example, Bush et al., (1999), using a counting Stroop task, found that children with ADHD showed underactivation in the anterior cingulate cognitive division (ACcd), and a concurrent increase in distractor interference, relative to controls. Stroop performance may thus qualify as a suitable (cognitive) endophenotype, indicative of ADHD. However, the search for endophenotypes should also be guided by the fact that many psychopathologies are highly heritable, and a recent line of inquiry has started to focus on the heritabilities of the endophenotypes themselves.Twin, adoption and family studies have shown that many psychopathologies are highly heritable (for review, see Acosta et al., 2004). For example, the heritability of ADHD is estimated to be around between 50% and 90% (e.g., Thapar et al., 1999). In a similar vein, the heritability of attention problems as

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“…This method was a visual choice reaction time task and is considered to correspond to by chemical substances and mental disorders (Rohrbaugh et al, 1988;Nestor et al, 1990;Schneider et al, 1999;Swaab-Barneveld et al, 2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

A new behavioral test for assessment of drug effects on attentional performance and its validity in cynomolgus monkeys

Fujiwara¹,

Iino²,

Sasaki³

et al. 2009

J. Toxicol. Sci.

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-The assessment of drug effects on attention is important in non-clinical pharmacolohave developed a two-lever choice behavioral test to assess drug effects on attentional performance in monkeys. In each trial of this experiment, one of two lamps in front of a monkey was randomly illuminated for a brief period of time and the monkey was required to press a lever beneath the lamp 30 times to obtain a food reward. The percentage of correct responses, response latency of correct choice responses and response speed were measured. Using this test, we examined the effects of three sedative drugs, diazepam (0.25, 1 and 4 mg/kg, i.g.), ethanol (0.5, 1 and 2 g/kg, i.g.), and pentobarbital (0.25, 1 and 4 percentage of correct responses, response and response speed, suggesting selective disruptive effects on attentional performance. In contrast, ethanol at the high dose tested caused deterioration in all three measby lengthening response speed. It is suggested that the present behavioral test method could detect drug effects on attentional performance in monkeys and could be a useful tool for safety assessment in drug development.

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Visual Sustained Attention in a Child Psychiatric Population

Cited by 85 publications

References 29 publications

Response Interference and Working Memory in 12-Year-Old Children

Response Interference and Working Memory in 12-Year-Old Children

Heritability of Selective Attention and Working Memory in Preschoolers

A new behavioral test for assessment of drug effects on attentional performance and its validity in cynomolgus monkeys

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