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Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Dissociation of sensitivity and response bias in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder during
Joshua I Breier1, Lincoln C Gray, Patricia Klaas
1Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA. joshua.i.breier@uth.tmc.edu
Insights
Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) showed greater difficulty inhibiting responses to auditory stimuli in noisy environments. This suggests a quantifiable deficit in inhibitory control using psychoacoustic methods.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception research
- Neurodevelopmental disorders
- Psychoacoustics
Background:
- Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention and hyperactivity.
- Individuals with ADHD often exhibit difficulties with executive functions, including inhibitory control.
- Psychoacoustic methods offer objective measures of auditory processing and cognitive functions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate auditory processing and response inhibition in children with and without ADHD using contralateral masking.
- To determine if psychoacoustic measures can quantify inhibitory control deficits in children with ADHD.
Main Methods:
- Forty-three children (ages 7.0-14.5 years) participated, with and without ADHD, combined type.
- Auditory thresholds for a 500-Hz pure tone were measured with and without contralateral noise masking.
- A single-interval maximum-likelihood method was employed to estimate thresholds and false-alarm rates.
Main Results:
- Children with ADHD exhibited a significantly greater increase in false-alarm rate under contralateral masking compared to controls.
- The increase in auditory detection thresholds in the presence of masking noise was comparable between children with ADHD and controls.
- This dissociation highlights differences in response bias rather than pure sensitivity.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the hypothesis that children with ADHD struggle with inhibiting maladaptive responses.
- Psychoacoustic methods, specifically response bias under masking, can quantify these inhibitory control deficits.
- This research provides objective evidence for executive function impairments in ADHD through auditory paradigms.
Abstract:
Forty-three children (ages 7.0-14.5 years old) with and without attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), combined type had thresholds for detection of a 500-Hz pure tone estimated with and without a noise masker in the contralateral ear. The ear receiving the signal in the masked condition was varied randomly. A single-interval maximum-likelihood method estimated thresholds and false-alarm rate. Whereas the increase in threshold in children with ADHD in the presence of contralateral masking was comparable with controls, the increase in false-alarm rate was significantly greater. This dissociation between changes in sensitivity and response bias in the presence of masking noise supports suggestions that children with ADHD have difficulty inhibiting maladaptive responses and indicates that this deficit is quantifiable using psychoacoustic methods.
