ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To compare the neuro-cognitive profiles among initial clinic referred medication naive sample of children with anxiety disorders (ANXs) and ADHD in a youth sample. METHOD: Three groups of patients, ANX ( n = 40), ADHD ( n = 48), and ANX + ADHD ( n = 33), aged 7 to 12 years, were compared with respect to their Physical and Neurological Examination for Subtle Signs (PANESS) and cognitive measures (digit span, digit symbol, Trail Making Test [TMT]-A and TMT-B, Stroop test). RESULTS: ADHD group performed worse than the other two groups with regard to soft signs and cognitive test performance; ANX + ADHD were impaired relative to ANX but better than ADHD. Significant differences were found for gait and station problems, overflows and timed movements, TMT error points, and Stroop interference scores. ADHD patients had more difficulty in warding off irrelevant responses and lower speed of time-limited movements. CONCLUSION: This clinical evaluation study suggested that ANX and ADHD seem to have significantly different neuro-cognitive features: Poorest outcomes were observed among children with ADHD; rather than problems of attention, inhibitory control deficits were the most prominent differences between ANX and ADHD; and the presence of ANX appears to have mitigating effect on ADHD-related impairments.
