No abstract

Objective: Effortful control (EC), the self-regulation component of temperament, is traditionally measured using questionnaires. Through the years, several neuropsychological measures originating from the cognitive psychology and the executive function (EF) literature have been introduced in the domain of temperament research to tap EC. Although this is not particularly surprising, given the conceptual overlap between EC and EF, it remains unclear whether EC questionnaires and neuropsychological EF tasks can really be used interchangeably when measuring EC. The current study addressed two important aspects in evaluating the interchangeability of both types of measures, that is: (a) do they measure the same construct?, and (b) do they give the same results when comparing clinical populations? Method: Three EC questionnaires, two inhibitory control tasks, and two attentional control tasks were administered in 148 typically developing children, 30 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and 31 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). All children were between 10 and 15 years of age and had a full scale IQ of 80 or higher.Results: Confirmatory Factor Analyses revealed that the questionnaires and EF tasks do not capture the same underlying latent variable(s). Groups could not be differentiated from each other based on their performance on EF tasks, whereas significant group differences were found for all EC-reports. Conclusions:Overall, our findings show more differences than commonalities between the EC questionnaires and EF tasks and, consequently, suggest that both types of measures should not be used interchangeably.

Executive attention and its relationship with effortful control (EC) were investigated in children with ADHD (n=24), autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n=20), and controls (n=21). Executive attention measures included flanker-performance and event-related potentials (N2, P3, and ERN). EC was assessed using questionnaires. Only the ERN was found to be robustly related to EC across groups. N2 did not differ between groups and only children with ADHD+ODD showed diminished executive attention as expressed in RT and P3. In ADHD, monitoring of incorrect (ERN) and correct (CRN) responses was diminished. Overall, the link between EC and executive attention was less strong as expected and varied depending on group and measure considered. All groups were able to detect conflict (N2) and all but ADHD+ODD were able to allocate extra attention in order to respond correctly (P3). Findings indicate a general reduced response monitoring in ADHD.

Objective: The present study investigated differences in attentional networks in typically developing (TD) boys and boys with ADHD or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In addition, we investigated the relationship between networks and the relationship with effortful control (EC). Method: An Attention Network Test was used to assess alerting, orienting, and executive attention in 25 TD boys, 25 boys with ADHD, and 25 boys with ASD. Results: In the absence of warning signals, boys with ADHD performed poorer than other children. In all groups, the orienting and executive control networks and the alerting and orienting networks interacted. Executive attention and EC were unrelated. Conclusion: Results provided evidence of impaired tonic alertness in ADHD and support the idea of functional integration of attentional networks. Finally, findings suggest that the link between EC reports and indices of neural systems involved in the effortful regulation of behavior may not be as unambiguous as previously thought.