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Continuum of impulsiveness caused by auditory masking
L C Gray1, J I Breier, B R Foorman
1Department of Otolaryngology, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, TX 77030, USA. lgray@uth.tmc.edu
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology
|November 22, 2002
Summary
Children with and without ADHD showed similar impulsivity with unpredictable sounds. However, normal children exhibited impulsivity similar to ADHD patients when background noise was unpredictable, suggesting a limit to auditory uncertainty tolerance.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception research
- Neurodevelopmental disorders
Background:
- Impulsivity is a key characteristic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
- Auditory masking techniques are used to measure impulsivity influenced by distracting sounds.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare impulsivity and distraction in children with and without ADHD using informational masking (unpredictable tones).
- To compare these findings with previous data on central masking (contralateral noise).
Main Methods:
- Twenty-six typically developing children and 14 children with ADHD (ages 7-13) participated.
- A single-interval task assessed pure tone detection under informational masking and quiet conditions.
- Maximum-likelihood methods estimated auditory thresholds and false alarm rates.
Main Results:
- No significant differences in thresholds or false alarm rates were found between ADHD and typically developing children in quiet or with informational masking.
- Informational masking led to high false alarm rates in typically developing children, comparable to ADHD children under central masking.
- All children demonstrated a tendency to report a stimulus when none was present under informational masking.
Conclusions:
- All children exhibit impulsivity under certain auditory conditions.
- Informational masking may simulate aspects of attention deficits in typically developing individuals.
- Children with ADHD may show divergent response biases only with intermediate predictability of distracting stimuli.
- Auditory tasks can be valuable for studying ADHD, with potential benefits from increasing the predictability of background sounds.
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