[Emotional self-regulation in infantile attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and P300 evoked potentials]

The difficulties that patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have when it comes to emotional regulation have aroused a great deal of interest in recent years and there is a line of research working on the identification of the neurophysiological correlates.

To analyse measures of emotional functioning and their correlation with the P300 component in a sample of children with ADHD with and without treatment.

The sample was made up of 71 children with ADHD, almost half of whom were taking some form of medication. The auditory potential P300 was analysed. The parents filled in a scale to assess executive behaviour at home, the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), which the emotional self-regulation index and the emotional expression scale were taken from.

Significant correlations were found between the amplitude of the P300 and the emotional self-regulation index from the version of the BRIEF for preschoolers, and a relation was observed between P300 latency and the severity of the symptoms.

The results highlight the usefulness of evoked potentials for the study of executive correlates and associated conditions in the day-to-day functioning of children with ADHD.