Objective: Very few studies have investigated intervention approaches that may be efficacious for youth with ADHD and co-occurring cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS) symptoms. This study examined the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention for adolescents with ADHD and co-occurring CDS symptoms.…

The present study examined the impact of divided attention on children's and adults' neutral and negative true and false memories in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Children (7- and 11-year-olds; n = 126) and adults (n = 52) received 5 neutral and 5 negative Deese/Roediger-McDermott word lists; half of each group also received a…

As effortful control (EC), the self-regulation aspect of temperament, has been argued to play a key role in the normal and psychopathological course of development, research adding to the construct validity of EC is needed. In the current study, interrelations between the temperament construct of EC and the efficiency of the executive attention…

The Sustained Attention to Response task is a classical neuropsychological test that has been used by many centres to characterize the attentional deficits in traumatic brain injury, ADHD, autism and other disorders. During the SART a random series of digits 1-9 is presented repeatedly and subjects have to respond to each digit (go trial) except…

Some studies of the event-related potentials demonstrated a reduction of the voluntary component P3 (P300 or P3b) in youngsters with the attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or in conduct disorders (CD), and a reduction of the automatic processing component, mismatch negativity, in patients with both ADHD and CD (ADHD+CD). Recently, a…

This study assessed visual selective attention in children with attention difficulties compared to typically achieving children using the flanker task and the feature and conjunction visual search task. Results suggest that children with attention difficulties have a characteristic inability to restrict visual attention to a limited spatial area…

Objective: Children with ADHD show attention-switching impairment. The present study assessed attention-switching ability in adults with ADHD, the extent to which this ability can be improved via targeted training, and the degree to which training extends to novel tasks of attention-switching. Method: Adults with ADHD (n = 16) and adults without…

This study, with 17 young adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 62 without ADHD, found no significant correlations between full scale IQ and scores on the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA). However, analysis of variance revealed that subjects with ADHD made more errors of omission on the TOVA than did controls.…

Attention processes in 103 children and adults with high functioning autism were compared with a matched control group using a battery of attention measures. Differences were found only on tasks which placed demands on cognitive flexibility or psychomotor speed, suggesting that purported attention deficits in autism may actually be primary…

This study investigated the role of executive function in children with attention deficit disorders (ADD) by comparing differences resulting when diagnostic measures of reading comprehension consisting of either short or long passages were used. Subjects (all in grades 1-12) were grouped as having an attention deficit disorder (ADD) and not taking…

This study compared children with either attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (n=24), reading disability (RD) (n=33), both (n=9), or controls. Children with ADHD were characterized by difficulty with a visual search task whereas children with RD had difficulty with an auditory processing task. Specifically, children with ADHD…

A visual orienting task was given to 11 high functioning male adolescents and adults with autism. Findings suggested that autistic people have difficulty processing briefly presented cue information and problems disengaging and shifting attention within the visual modality. Results support previous ideas that attentional dysfunction may underlie…

Attention acts as the mind's "gatekeeper" by regulating and prioritizing the stimuli processed by the central nervous system. It is essential for cognitive performance, memory, and behavior, and we know that even slight deficiencies in attention compromise learning. Basic neuroscience research further indicates that attention consists of (fairly)…

This paper covers selected findings from three studies that compared different diagnostic groups: boys with attention deficit disorder (ADD) with or without hyperactivity (HY) but normal reading ability; boys with reading disability (RD) but not HY; and boys with both RD and HY. Studies examined an adapted task to assess frontal and temporal lobe…

This study investigated the effects of prompting, or directing/controlling attention, during a reasoning task on the performance of 68 children with attention deficit disorders, learning disabilities, or no handicaps, in grades 1-12. All groups benefited from prompting, and prompting was related to a different set of cognitive processes in each…