Longitudinal Trajectories of Sustained Attention Development in Children and Adolescents with ADHD

Thomson, Phoebe; Vijayakumar, Nandita; Johnson, Katherine A.; Malpas, Charles B; Sciberras, Emma; Efron, Daryl; Hazell, Philip; Silk, Tim

doi:10.1007/s10802-020-00698-5

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…As for go and ignore response accuracy, both omissions to the go stimulus and omissions to the ignore stimulus showed differences in younger and older children, with younger children making more errors. This is in accordance with our hypotheses and with previous studies [ 60 , 62 ], and suggests that the ability to focus and sustain attention on the ongoing task develops with age. Notably, only ignore omissions were a predictor of age group in our logistic regression analyses.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

“…In partial agreement with our hypotheses, we observed a reduction in the sigma parameter throughout middle childhood, which replicates previous findings from other tasks [ 57 , 58 ]. However, we did not find any differences in the tau parameter, which was unexpected since a reduction in tau with age has been found in typically developing children at this stage [ 58 , 59 , 60 ]. This might be due to the fact that we used short ISIs in our task.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

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Selective Inhibitory Control in Middle Childhood

Rincón‐Pérez

Sánchez-Carmona

Arroyo-Lozano³

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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The main aim of this study was to investigate the development of selective inhibitory control in middle childhood, a critical period for the maturation of inhibition-related processes. To this end, 64 children aged 6–7 and 56 children aged 10–11 performed a stimulus-selective stop-signal task, which allowed us to estimate not only the efficiency of response inhibition (the stop-signal reaction time or SSRT), but also the strategy adopted by participants to achieve task demands. We found that the adoption of a non-selective (global) strategy characterized by stopping indiscriminately to all stimuli decreased in older children, so that most of them were able to interrupt their ongoing responses selectively at the end of middle childhood. Moreover, compared to younger children, older children were more efficient in their ability to cancel an initiated response (indexed by a shorter SSRT), regardless of which strategy they used. Additionally, we found improvements in other forms of impulsivity, such as the control of premature responding (waiting impulsivity), and attentional-related processes, such as intra-individual variability and distractibility. The present results suggest that middle childhood represents a milestone in the development of crucial aspects of inhibitory control, including selective stopping.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Selective Inhibitory Control in Middle Childhood

Rincón‐Pérez

Sánchez-Carmona

Arroyo-Lozano³

et al. 2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Specifically, attention has been widely studied in primary school-aged children (5-12 years) and research has indicated rapid development from 5-6 to 8-9 years, followed by a plateau from 8-9 to 11-12 years with only minor improvements (e.g., Betts et al, 2006). More recently, attention development has been investigated not only during adolescence, showing larger improvements with the age until 16 (Thomson et al, 2020), but also over the life span. After adolescence, sustained attention ability continues to improve, although slowly, and peaks in the mid-1940s, and then gradually declines in older adults (e.g., Fortenbaugh et al, 2015).…”

Section: Linking Attention Restoration Cognitive Functioning and Academic Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Short-Term Exposure to Nature and Benefits for Students’ Cognitive Performance: a Review

et al. 2021

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There is growing interest recently in the outdoor environment surrounding schools where students spent time during breaks, in-school activities, and after-school programs. Several reviews have examined the impact of long-term exposures to nearby nature on students’ academic achievement, but none has focused on the effects of short-term contacts with nature on students’ cognitive performance. The aim of this review is to understand the context in which short-term passive exposures to greenness occur, how cognitive performance is measured, and the conditions under which cognitive benefits emerge at various educational levels. We reviewed 14 studies in the extant literature that report investigations involving students at different educational levels, from elementary school to university, in a short exposure to nature lasting from 10 to 90 min during a study day. The review shows that in 12 out of the 14 studies, across educational levels, cognitive benefits emerge in terms of directed attention restoration from mental fatigue due to contact with nature. A no-cost opportunity to sustain students’ cognition is a break in a green environment after mentally demanding activities.

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“…This low teacher‐student bond could be harmful, as reduced teacher acceptance is associated to lowered academic achievement 44 . An alternative explanation of the association between attention problems and academic underachievement could be that academic tasks require sustained allocation of attention, which may be particularly difficult for children with attention problems 45 . Accordingly, children with ADHD may not have problems with classroom content, but rather with classroom processes such as school motivation and study skills 46 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child mental health problems as a risk factor for academic underachievement: A multi‐informant, population‐based study

Schuurmans

Martinez

Blok

et al. 2022

Acta Psychiatr Scand

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Objective To investigate whether child mental health problems prospectively associate with IQ‐achievement discrepancy (i.e., academic under‐ and over‐achievement) in emerging adolescence. The secondary aims were to test whether these associations are specific to certain mental health problems, to assess potential sex differences, and to examine whether associations are robustly observed across multiple informants (i.e., maternal and teacher‐reports). Methods This study included 1,577 children from the population‐based birth cohort the Generation R Study. Child mental health problems at age 6 were assessed by mothers and teachers using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Teacher's Report Form. The IQ‐achievement discrepancy was quantified as the standardized residuals of academic achievement regressed on IQ, where IQ was measured with four tasks from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children‐Fifth Edition around age 13 and academic attainment was measured with the Cito test, a national Dutch academic test, at the end of elementary school (12 years of age). Results Mental health problems at age 6 were associated with IQ‐achievement discrepancy at age 12, with more problems associating with greater academic underachievement. When examining specific mental health problems, we found that attention problems was the only mental health problem to independently associate with the IQ‐achievement discrepancy (adjusted standardized difference per 1‐standard deviation, mother: −0.11, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.16, −0.06]; teacher: −0.13, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.18, −0.08]). These associations remained after adjusting for co‐occurring mental health problems. The overall pattern of associations was consistent across boys and girls and across informants. Conclusion Mental health problems during the transition from kindergarten to elementary school associate with academic underachievement at the end of elementary school. These associations were primarily driven by attention problems, as rated by both mothers and teachers—suggesting that strategies targeting attention problems may be a particularly promising avenue for improving educational performance irrespective of IQ, although this should be established more thoroughly through further research.

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Longitudinal Trajectories of Sustained Attention Development in Children and Adolescents with ADHD

Cited by 24 publications

References 87 publications

Selective Inhibitory Control in Middle Childhood

Selective Inhibitory Control in Middle Childhood

Short-Term Exposure to Nature and Benefits for Students’ Cognitive Performance: a Review

Child mental health problems as a risk factor for academic underachievement: A multi‐informant, population‐based study

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