Studies of the Executive Function Profiles in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To study the executive function (EF) profiles in children with ADHD. Methods: 1.We used some neuropsychological tests,including Stroop test, visual and auditory Go/No-Go tasks, digits reciting inverse, delayed spacial position memory span test, tower of London (TOL), tail making test (TMT),to evaluate the capacity of response inhibition, phonological working memory, visual-spacial working memory, planning and set-shifting of subjects. Results: 1.The ADHD children spent more time to accomplish color naming when the word color was inconsistent with the word meaning than normal control (NC) in Stroop test(p﹤0.05). 2.The ADHD children made more errors than NC in both visual and auditory Go/No-Go test(p﹤0.01). 3.The scores of digits reciting inverse was lower in ADHD than NC(p﹤0.01). 4.The representation of ADHD was poorer than NC in delayed spacial position memory span test(p﹤0.01). 5. In TOL test, the ADHD children spent more time in all of two-move, four-move and five-move tasks than NC, and broke rules more frequently than NC(p﹤0.05). 6.In TMT, the ADHD children spent more time and made more errors on part B than NC(p﹤0.05), and there was no significant difference on part A (p﹥0.05). Conclusions: The obvious impaired executive functions are found in children with ADHD, involving poor response inhibition,impaired working memory, dysfunction of planning and set-shifting.