ADHD in Children
Visual Abstract
Reaction time performance in ADHD: improvement under fast-incentive condition and familial effects
ADHD: Reaction Time and Incentives
Penny Andreou , Ben M Neale, Wai Chen, Hanna Christiansen, Isabel Gabriels, Alexander Heise, Sheera Meidad, Ueli C Muller, Henrik Uebel, Tobias Banaschewski, Iris Manor, Robert Oades, Herbert Roeyers, Aribert Rothenberger, Pak Sham, Hans-Christoph Steinhausen, Philip Asherson, Jonna Kuntsi
Summarized by:
June 12, 2023
study source
Psychol Med
Dec 2007
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What they studied
How do incentives and event rate change reaction time variability, a key cognitive trait in ADHD?
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What they found
Teens with ADHD had more reaction time variability, which improved when incentives were provided. Reaction time variability also had a strong familial component.
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What this means
Reaction time variability is a key aspect of ADHD and may have some genetic basis. However, it can change under different conditions, particularly with motivations and incentives.
Reaction time performance in ADHD: improvement under fast-incentive condition and familial effects
Objectives
Researchers have increasingly found that ADHD can affect the way that we think.
One of the strongest effects has been seen in reaction time variability. On cognitive tests, those with ADHD tend to have a wide range of reaction times.
Some studies have suggested that this may be because of inattention. Those with ADHD can sometimes take extraordinarily long to answer some questions, thus increasing the range of reaction times.
Study Quote
Reaction time (RT) variability is one of the strongest findings to emerge in cognitive-experimental research of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We set out to confirm the association between ADHD and slow and variable RTs and investigate the degree to which RT performance...
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Methods
This study performed tests of reaction time on 144 children and teenagers with ADHD and compared their results to their siblings and 60 similar children without ADHD.
Study Quote
A total of 144 ADHD combined-type probands, 125 siblings of the ADHD probands and 60 control participants, ages 6-18, performed a four-choice RT task with baseline and fast-incentive conditions.
Results
As expected, children with ADHD tended to have a broader range of reaction times compared to children without ADHD.
Overall, they also had slower reaction times compared to children without ADHD.
However, when children with ADHD were incentivized, their reaction times improved.
Based on data within families in the study, researchers found that much of the difference in reaction time variability was passed between siblings and families.
Among males, the familial effect was even stronger.
Study Quote
ADHD was associated with slow and variable RTs, and with greater improvement in speed and RT variability from baseline to fast-incentive condition. RT performance showed shared familial influences with ADHD. Under the assumption that the familial effects represent genetic influences, the...
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Conclusions
These results show that reaction time variability is a key cognitive deficit in ADHD. Incentives and motivation can improve performance for those with ADHD. The data on reaction time variability within families suggest that genetics may play a role in this trait. Siblings of those with more significant reaction time variability are more likely to have a reaction time variability themselves, even if they don’t have ADHD.
These results are consistent with other studies that have identified reaction time variability as a key effect of ADHD:
Study Quote
The data are inconsistent with models that consider RT variability as reflecting a stable cognitive deficit in ADHD, but instead emphasize the extent to which energetic or motivational factors can have a greater effect on RT performance in ADHD. The findings support the role of RT variab...
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