Selective and sustained attention in children with spina bifida myelomeningocele

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Pediatric Neurology

Background:

• Spina bifida myelomeningocele (SBM) is a neural tube defect linked to cognitive deficits, particularly in attention.
• Previous attention assessments in SBM were often confounded by motor demands or failed to isolate perceptual and response components.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate selective and sustained attention in children with SBM using novel, motor-minimal tasks.
• To identify specific attention parameters affected by SBM and assess the utility of new testing methods.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a verbal-report paradigm based on the Theory of Visual Attention and the Dual Attention to Response Task (DART).
• Assessed 6 children with SBM and 18 healthy controls, focusing on tasks with minimal motor demands and functional specificity.

Main Results:

• Children with SBM demonstrated significantly reduced efficiency in filtering irrelevant stimuli.
• Frequent failures in sustained attention and response control were observed, including omission errors and premature responses.
• All SBM participants showed attention deficits, with considerable individual variation in performance patterns.

Conclusions:

• The study highlights significant attention impairments in children with SBM, affecting stimulus filtering and response control.
• The findings underscore the importance of individualized assessment methods for attention deficits in SBM.
• The employed novel tasks proved effective in detecting subtle attention deficits in this population.