title: Attentional Bias towards Emotional Scenes in Boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) react explosively and inappropriately to emotional stimuli. It could be hypothesized that these children have some impairment in attending to emotional cues. Based on this hypothesis, we conducted this study to evaluate visual directions of children with ADHD towards paired emotional scenes.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thirty boys between the ages of 6 and 11 years diagnosed with ADHD were compared with 30 age-matched normal boys. All participants were presented paired emotional and neutral scenes in the four following categories: pleasant-neutral; pleasant-unpleasant; unpleasant-neutral; and neutral - neutral. Meanwhile, their visual orientations towards these pictures were evaluated using the eye tracking system. The number and duration of first fixation and duration of first gaze were compared between the two groups using the MANOVA analysis. The performance of each group in different categories was also analyzed using the Friedman test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  With regards to duration of first gaze, which is the time taken to fixate on a picture before moving to another picture, ADHD children spent less time on pleasant pictures compared to normal group, while they were looking at pleasant - neutral and unpleasant - pleasant pairs. The duration of first gaze on unpleasant pictures was higher while children with ADHD were looking at unpleasant - neutral pairs (P<0.01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on the findings of this study it could be concluded that children with ADHD attend to unpleasant conditions more than normal children which leads to their emotional reactivity.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Cognitive Science Studies (ICSS), Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Ebrahim
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pishyareh
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tehrani-Doost
authors.forename: Javad
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mahmoodi-Gharaie
authors.forename: Anahita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khorrami
authors.forename: Mitra
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Joudi
authors.forename: Mehrnoosh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ahmadi