ABSTRACT
Objective To analyze inhibitions and working memory impairments in children with different subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with saccade tasks. Methods Participants,aged 10～ 13 years with ADHD-combined ( n= 19) ,ADHD-inattentive ( n= 11 ) and control subjects ( n= 18) ,were selected according to DSM-Ⅳ diagnosis,Conners teacher rating scale and parent symptom questionnaire from 1500pupils from 2 primary schools in Jinhua city by stratified cluster sampling method. Participants performed 3 different saccade tasks: 1 prosaccade and 2 antisaccades executed in a single-task and a dual-task situation. One of the antisaccade tasks was performed under the verbal secondary task condition to investigate verbal working memory.Saccades were registered by Eyelink Ⅱ Tracker. Errors and correct rate were analyzed. One-way ANOVA and repeated measures ANOVA were used to analyze the data. Results (1) Each group showed more response suppression errors on antisaccade task without load than on prosaccade task, ADHD-combined and ADHD-inattentive exhibited more errors than non-ADHD (P＜0.01) ,and errors was lower in ADHD-inattentive than in ADHD-combined ( ( 70.90 ± 15.78 ) % vs ( 84.04 ± 12.84 ) %, P ＜ 0.05 ). (2) The interactions between group and load were not significant in error rate on antisaccade tasks (P ＞ 0.05 ), but in correct rate (P ＜ 0. 05 ). The two subtypes of ADHD were affected more than non-ADHD, their correct rates tended to decrease under verbal working memory load. Conclusion An integrative view of deficits in inhibition and verbal working memory in two subtypes of ADHD is proposed, and ADHD-inattentive has a better response suppression than ADHD-combined.