Executive Function Oculomotor Tasks in Girls With ADHD

Deficits in visuo-spatial working memory, inhibition and oculomotor control in boys with ADHD and their non-affected brothers

“…colleagues (1994a, 2000) found no impairments in children and adults with ADHD in the accuracy and latency (reaction time) of saccades towards the memorized target. This contrasts with the results reported by Castellanos et al (2000), who found girls with ADHD to be less accurate than control girls, but with comparable saccade latency. The opposite pattern was found by Mostofsky and colleagues (2001), who reported children with ADHD to be as accurate, though slower in their saccades to the memorized target.…”

“…Because participants have to suppress a potent response to the target, failures of response inhibition are expressed by anticipatory saccades to the target location. All cited studies above reported more anticipatory saccades in patients with ADHD (Ross et al 1994a(Ross et al , 2000Castellanos et al 2000;Mostofsky et al 2001). This consistent finding is also frequently reported in ADHD using paradigms other than the memory-guided saccade task, such as the antisaccade paradigm (Cairney et al 2001;Klein et al 2003;Feifel et al 2004).…”

“…We found boys with ADHD to be less accurate in their saccades towards the memorized target, which is in line with another study reporting on girls with ADHD using a memory-guided saccade task (Castellanos et al 2000) but inconsistent with others (Ross et al 1994a(Ross et al , 2000Mostofsky et al 2001), who reported no impairments in accuracy towards memorized targets in ADHD. The inconsistent results for accuracy in studies using memory-guided saccade tasks is worrisome, the more so since meta-analyses suggest effect sizes for ADHD versus controls in standard cognitive measures of visuo-spatial working memory are fairly robust (Martinussen et al 2005).…”

“…The memory saccade task has also been used as an important indicator of response inhibition (Ross et al 1994a(Ross et al , 2000Castellanos et al 2000;Mostofsky et al 2001). Because participants have to suppress a potent response to the target, failures of response inhibition are expressed by anticipatory saccades to the target location.…”

Reconhecimento olfativo nos transtornos invasivos do desenvolvimento

“…Esses mecanismos de identifi cação e de aprendizado, a partir dos inputs sensoriais, englobam também a Transtornos invasivos do desenvolvimento: olfato Assumpção & Adamo função executiva central, defi nida como a habilidade para encontrar soluções (ou estratégias) adequadas para um determinado problema, visando um objetivo futuro 26 , o que faz com que o indivíduo possa se envolver num comportamento próprio, autônomo e sob seu próprio controle, de forma efi caz 27 . A função executiva central se encontra alterada nos transtornos invasivos do desenvolvimento, e pode estar envolvida nos processos de identifi cação de diferentes inputs sensoriais, uma vez que ela regula o fl uxo de informações, bem como recupera, da memória de estocagem, as informações que se fazem necessárias, envolvendo também uma série de habilidades, que incluem a aprendizagem, mecanismos de regras, raciocínio e mecanismos atencionais orientados para um objetivo fi nal, previamente estabelecido.…”