Impaired spatial working memory in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: comparisons with performance in adults with borderline personality disorder and in control subjects.
OBJECTIVE
This study investigated a previous claim that working memory may be 'particularly impaired' in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), compared with other psychiatric disorders which affect frontal lobe-mediated executive functions.


METHODS
Performance on spatial working memory (SWM) and two additional tasks were investigated for adult patients selected on the basis of DSM-IV ADHD (n = 19), adult patients selected on the basis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) (n = 19), and non-clinical control subjects (n = 19). Groups were matched for age, verbal IQ and gender.


RESULTS
Analysis of variance showed that the ADHD group had significant impairment of SWM performance relative to the non-clinical controls. Although there was a trend towards impairment in the BPD group relative to non-clinical controls, this did not reach significance.


CONCLUSIONS
The results are consistent with the claim that aspects of working memory are 'particularly impaired' in adult ADHD. Also, the BPD group had a longer deliberation time for one of the additional tasks, compared with the ADHD group, which indicated that the patient groups may have different patterns of neuropsychological impairments.
Dowson
J H
JH
Cambridge University Department of Psychiatry, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK. jhd1000@cam.ac.uk
McLean
A
A
Bazanis
E
E
Toone
B
B
Young
S
S
Robbins
T W
TW
Sahakian
B J
BJ
D000328:Adult; D017668:Age of Onset; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology*