Exogenous orienting of visual-spatial attention in ADHD children

Visual spatial orienting of attention towards exogenous cues has been one of the attentional functions considered to be spared in ADHD. Here we present a design in which 60 (30 ADHD) children, age: 10.9±1.4, were asked to covertly orient their attention to one or two (out of four) cued locations, and search for a target stimulus in one of these locations, while recording behavioral responses and EEG/ERP. In all conditions, ADHD children showed delayed reaction times and poorer behavioral performance. They also exhibited larger cue-elicited P2 but reduced CNV in the preparation stage. Larger amplitude of CNV predicted better performance in the task. Target-elicited N1 and selection negativity were also reduced in the ADHD group compared to non-ADHD. Groups also differed in the early and late P3 time-windows. The present results suggest that exogenous orienting of attention could be dysfunctional in ADHD under certain conditions. This limitation is not necessarily caused by an impairment of the orienting process itself, but instead by a difficulty in maintaining the relevant information acquired during the early preparation stage through the target processing stage, when it is really needed.