Diagnostic Significance of Comprehensive Attention Test in Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of the Comprehensive Attention Test (CAT) by comparing the results of the continuous performance test (CPT) and the CAT in children and adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHOD: A total of 110 children and adolescents with ADHD (mean age 11.2+/-2.9 years, 76 boys) and 36 children and adolescents without ADHD (mean age 12.0+/-2.7 years, 25 boys) completed the CAT. We compared the specificity and sensitivity of the CPT and CAT at two different cut-off points via the McNemar test. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) between the two groups were compared using Medcalc software. RESULTS: The sensitivity and specificity of the CPT were .419 and .806, respectively. The sensitivity of the CAT was .827, which was significantly higher than that of the CPT (p<.001), and the specificity of CAT is .444, which was significantly lower than that of CPT (p<.001). The AUC of the CPT and CAT was .664 and .692, respectively, and there were no significant difference between the two groups on the paired comparison (p=.513). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that the CAT has moderate specificity and high sensitivity. The CAT can be used as a useful tool to evaluate the neuropsychological function of children and adolescents with ADHD.