title: Behavioral and electrophysiological indicators of auditory distractibility in children with ADHD and comorbid ODD.
abstract: Involuntary switching of attention to distracting sounds was studied by measuring effects of these events on auditory discrimination performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in 6-11-year-old boys with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and comorbid Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and in age-matched controls. The children were instructed to differentiate between two animal calls by pressing one response button, for example, to a dog bark and another button to a cat mew. These task-relevant sounds were presented from one of two loudspeakers in front of the child, and there were occasional task-irrelevant changes in the sound location, that is, the loudspeaker. In addition, novel sounds (e.g., a sound of hammer, rain, or car horn) unrelated to the task were presented from a loudspeaker behind the child. The percentage of correct responses was lower for target sounds preceded by a novel sound than for targets not preceded by such sound in the ADHD group, but not in the control group. In both groups, a biphasic positive P3a response was observed in ERPs to the novel sounds. The later part of the P3a appeared to continue longer over the frontal scalp areas in the ADHD group than in the controls presumably because a reorienting negativity (RON) ERP response following the P3a was smaller in the ADHD group than in the control group. This suggests that the children with ADHD had problems in reorienting their attention to the current task after a distracting novel sound leading to deterioration of performance in this task. The present study also indicates that children with ADHD and comorbid ODD show same kind of distractibility as found in previous studies for children with ADHD without systematic comorbid ODD.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute for Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Electronic address: lea@oja.fi.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Oja
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute for Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Brain Work Research Centre, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huotilainen
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Neurology, Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nikkanen
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Neurology, Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Oksanen-Hennah
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Department of Phoniatrics, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laasonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Neurology, Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Voutilainen
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Neurology, Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: von Wendt
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland; Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Alho
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D019958:Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D015897:Comorbidity; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: ADHD; Attention; Distractibility; ERP; ODD; Orienting; P3a