Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESExecutive Function Oculomotor Tasks in Girls With ADHD
Section snippets
Subjects
ADHD Group. A total of 32 females with ADHD (mean age ± SD, 8.8 ± 1.9 years) were recruited from local clinics and schools. DSM-IV diagnoses were based on interview with a parent and separately with the patient if older than 9 years, using the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents (DICA) (Herjanic and Reich, 1997), the Conners Teacher Rating Scale-Revised (CTRS) (Conners, 1997), and the Teacher's Report Form (Achenbach et al., 1991). Patients were required to meet full DSM-IV
RESULTS
The order of testing was the same for all subjects, with smooth pursuit eye movement first, followed by go-no go and delayed response tasks. However, not all subjects completed all tasks, and data were unavailable for some tasks because of technical difficulties. Accordingly, results for each task are reported separately (TABLE 1, TABLE 2, TABLE 3). There were no significant group differences in age for any task.
As shown in Table 1, there were no significant differences among girls with ADHD
DISCUSSION
In this, the first examination of a battery of eye movement tasks in unmedicated girls with ADHD and age-matched control subjects, we found statistically robust abnormalities on the tasks that required inhibition and working memory, i.e., go-no go and delayed response. In contrast, we did not detect significant differences in eye movement performance during smooth pursuit. The latter result is largely consistent with findings in a sample of 17 boys and 1 girl with ADHD who did not differ from
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Support for this research was made possible in part by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute through the Undergraduate Biology Education Program at Arizona State University.