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Initial Orientation of Attention towards Emotional Faces in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Mehrnoosh Ahmadi1, Mitra Judi, Anahita Khorrami

  • 1Department of psychiatry, Roozbeh psychiatry hospital, Tehran university of medical sciences,Tehran,Iran.

Iranian Journal of Psychiatry
|September 7, 2012
PubMed

Insights

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) do not show a preference for negative facial expressions. However, neurotypical children tend to prefer negative emotions over neutral faces.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Clinical psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Early recognition of negative emotions is crucial for social development.
  • Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may struggle with recognizing facial emotional expressions, particularly negative ones.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the visual attention preference for negative facial expressions (angry, sad) in children with ADHD compared to typically developing children.
  • To determine if children with ADHD exhibit a different orientation towards negative emotional stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • 35 drug-naive boys with ADHD (6-11 years) and 31 matched healthy controls participated.
  • Visual orientation was recorded using eye-tracking while participants viewed pairs of negative-neutral facial expressions.
  • The number of first fixations to each expression served as an index of initial attentional orientation.

Main Results:

  • No significant difference was found in initial attention orientation between children with ADHD and healthy controls.
  • Normal children showed a tendency to orient towards negative emotions.
  • Children with ADHD did not display a preference for negative over neutral facial expressions.

Conclusions:

  • Children with ADHD do not exhibit a significant preference for negative facial expressions.
  • Typically developing children demonstrate a preference for negative facial emotions compared to neutral faces.
Abstract

Keywords:
AttentionAttention deficit disorder with hyperactivityrChildEye movementFacial expression

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