Poster #63 - Relations Between Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptomatology and Performance on Simple and Complex Timing Tasks

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by high levels of hyperactivity and inattention. Recently, researchers have also uncovered a range of timing deficits in children and teens with high levels of ADHD symptomology (Sonuga-Barke, 2010), and have proposed that timing deficits constitute a third causal pathway of ADHD. Much of this work has focused on very simple timing tasks such as interval timing or duration discrimination. One exception is a study by Nicholas et al. (2016) examining how child cyclists with and without ADHD cross virtual roads with traffic. They found that youth with ADHD demonstrated delayed timing of movement when entering the intersection, resulting in less time to spare when exiting the roadway. Further, hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms were specifically associated with selection of smaller gaps, whereas timing deficits were specifically associated with inattention and poorer inhibitory control. These findings suggest that inattention may negatively impact timing of motor movements, but it is not known whether symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention show similar relations with simple and complex timing tasks, and whether deficits on simple timing tasks (e.g., interval timing) predict deficits on more complex timing tasks (e.g., road crossing).

The current study examined the relations between ADHD symptomology and a range of simple to more complex timing tasks, as well as the relations between performance on simple and more complex timing tasks. Participants included eighty-one 9- to 11-year-old children who completed three simple timing tasks and three complex timing tasks. The three simple tasks included interval timing, prospective time estimation, and duration discrimination. The three complex tasks were completed in a head-mounted virtual reality environment and included time-to-walk estimates, time-to-arrival judgments, and pedestrian road crossing. In the time-to-walk task, children were estimated the time it would take for them to walk varying distances in the virtual environment. In the time-to-arrival judgments, children estimated the time at which cars would arrive directly in front of them after cars passed behind an occluder and disappeared. For the pedestrian road crossing, children crossed roads with continuous traffic in the virtual environment. Parents filled out questionnaires assessing their children’s temperament and ADHD symptomology. These questionnaires included: Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ), Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale (BDEFS), Conner’s 3-Short Form, and ADHD/DBD Checklist. A factor analysis of responses on the parent questionnaires yielded three main factors: inattention, hyperactivity, and aggression.

Preliminary analyses revealed a positive correlation between the inattention factor and error on the time-to-arrival task (r= .27, p=.017) and error on the prospective time estimation task (r=.21, p=.062). We also found that thresholds in the duration discrimination task were positively correlated with the time-to-arrival task (r=.28, p=.046). These preliminary results suggest that higher levels of parent-reported inattention are related to poorer performance on both simple and complex timing tasks. Further analyses will be conducted to more fully examine the associations between performance on the simple and complex tasks, and whether ADHD symptomatology predicts performance on each of the timing tasks.

Authors

• Morgan Nicole Parr, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Hanxi Tang, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jodie Plumert, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author