Characteristics of attention during visual search in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the characteristics of attention during visual search tasks in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Methods:Totally 45 adult patients with ADHD who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and 44 healthy controls matched with age,gender and IQ were selected.The reaction time and accuracy rate of two groups were compared under visual search tasks of low and high visual working memory load.Results:The reaction time was longer in patients with ADHD than in the healthy controls in both low-load task [(823 ± 144) ms vs.(754 ± 123) ms,P ＜ 0.01] and highload task [(912 ± 163) ms vs.(851 ± 162) ms,P ＜ 0.01].Compared with the performance in low load task,the search reaction time was longer in high load task [ADHD group(823 ± 144) ms vs.(912 ± 163) ms,P ＜ 0.01;control group(754 ± 123) ms vs.(851 ± 162) ms,P ＜0.01] and the accuracy rate was lower during high load task than low load task[ADHD group(95.9 ±4.3)％ vs.(91.2 ± 14.29)％;control group(95.8 ± 4.2)％ vs.(94.4 ±4.9) ％,P ＜ 0.01] in both ADHD and control groups.Conclusion:The results suggest impairment in top-down attentional control in ADHD adults.When the visual working memory load is increasing,ADHD patients allocate more working memory resources on storing the target representation and less resources on visual attention,so the search efficiency may be influenced.