Response Inhibition in Tic Disorders: Waiting to Respond Is Harder When ADHD Is Present

Tic disorders such as Gilles-de-la-Tourette syndrome (TS) are associated with difficulties in withholding movements and sometimes inappropriate actions. The present study examined whether these disorders lead to a specific difficulty in withholding preprogrammed voluntary movements irrespective of decisions on whether or not to move.

Children with TS with or without attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and controls performed a fast-paced simple reaction time task involving responses to a target in a rapid letter stream (9 letters/s, average foreperiod 332 ms) with feedback on response speed.

The ADHD group showed more premature responses and more variable response time than other groups, whether the timing of the target was predictable or not.

The data indicate that in tic disorders, the presence of ADHD is associated with difficulties in waiting to initiate preprogrammed movements independently of response selection or response timing difficulties.