Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates of Performance Monitoring and Development in Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

The pathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) involves deficits in performance monitoring and adaptive adjustments. Yet, the developmental trajectory and underlying neural correlates of performance monitoring deficits in youth with ADHD remain poorly understood. To address the gap, this study recruited 77 children and adolescents with ADHD and 77 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC), ages 8–18 years, who performed an arrow flanker task during electroencephalogram recording. Compared to HC, participants with ADHD responded more slowly and showed larger reaction time variability (RTV) and reduced post-error slowing; they also exhibited reduced error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity effects, and reduced N2 and P3 congruency effects. Age effects were observed across groups: with increasing age, participants responded faster, with less variability, and with increased post-error slowing. They also exhibited increased ERN effects and increased N2 and P3 congruency effects. Increased RTV and reduced P3 amplitude in incongruent trials were associated with increased ADHD Problems Scale scores on the Child Behavior Checklist across groups. The altered behavioral and ERP responses in ADHD are consistent with the pattern associated with younger age across groups. Further research with a longitudinal design may determine specific aspects of developmental alteration and deficits in ADHD during performance monitoring.

Dose-Response Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise Intensity on Inhibitory Control in Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

“…It involves participants being instructed to identify a target stimulus defined by its directionality (i.e., the directionality of an arrow) while ignoring other distracting stimuli that flanking the target stimulus. In general, children with ADHD display longer RT (Liu et al, 2020) and lower response accuracy (Johnstone and Galletta, 2013) compared with typically developing children during the flanker task.…”

The arrow of time: Advancing insights into action control from the arrow version of the Eriksen flanker task

“…They did find, as did Jonkman et al ( 1999 ), that error rate, not response speed, distinguished the two groups; the increase in error rate for incongruent relative to neutral arrays was larger among children diagnosed with AD/HD than among controls. FMRI analyses suggested that this differential increase in error rate may be associated with a differentially larger reduction of activation in neural pathways that mediate response inhibition (in particular, the caudate nucleus) compared with those that mediate interference suppression among children diagnosed with AD/HD (for related findings, see Liu et al 2020 ; Plessen et al, 2016 , discussed below).…”

“…They found, as had the bulk of the studies reviewed above, that the reduction in response speed and accuracy induced by incongruent arrays was comparable between the two groups. Most recently, Liu et al ( 2020 ) examined the processing of arrow flankers in a relatively large sample of children and adolescents with AD/HD. Responses were slower and less accurate to incongruent than to congruent arrays, and the congruence effect on the speed of responding was, at trend-level significance, more pronounced in participants with AD/HD compared with controls.…”

The effects of acute aerobic exercise on inhibitory control and resting state heart rate variability in children with ADHD

“…The frontal N2 is thought to be specifically related to conflict detection when facing two competing stimuli (e.g., task-relevant vs. task-irrelevant information) 15 . Evidence has indicated that children with ADHD have smaller N2 amplitude during inhibitory control tasks when compared to their typically developing (TD) counterparts, which may imply failures in conflict detection 16 , 17 . Despite a paucity of research delineating the modulatory effects of acute exercise on the N2 in children with ADHD, findings from other clinical population with deficits in inhibitory control could provide hints regarding the potential effects of acute exercise.…”