Selective Attention Dynamics in Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Role for Sensory Processing...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms persist into adulthood.
• Selective attention impairments in ADHD may be domain-general or specific.
• The timing of attention deficits (encoding vs. response mapping) and presentation differences are unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate selective attention differences across auditory and visual modalities in adults with ADHD.
• Examine event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify timing and modality-specific attention deficits.
• Differentiate attentional processing in inattentive and combined ADHD presentations versus controls.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an intermodal selective attention task.
• Compared adults with inattentive (n=80) and combined (n=31) ADHD presentations to unaffected adults (n=37).
• Employed multivariate statistical inference (partial least squares) to analyze ERPs.

Main Results:

• Individuals with ADHD performed worse on the selective attention task.
• Attentional effects (attending vs. ignoring) were observed in early (<200ms) and late (>300ms) processing across modalities.
• ADHD-related differences were prominent in visual attention tasks and early sensory processing (P1) for auditory stimuli, indicating altered sustained attention.

Conclusions:

• ADHD-related selective attention impairments persist into adulthood and are context-dependent, favoring visual over auditory attention.
• Altered sustained attention accompanies these selective attention deficits.
• Postsensory attention processes were more affected in the combined ADHD presentation.