Modulation of attentional blink with sound in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

Although it has been found that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with impaired ability of inhibition control often showed greater attentional blink (AB), there is minimal information in regards to attention deficit in the interaction of AB enhancement with sound induction. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was used by presenting an audiology pure tone evaluation simultaneously with T2 to investigate how auditory-driven visual perception enhances AB in children with ADHD. The results showed that children with ADHD had greater AB, and they performed worse than typically developing children (TD) in AB amplitude and recovery time. In addtion, the sound enhanced AB in TD children but interfered in children with ADHD. These results indicate that children with ADHD with faulty attentional allocation have fewer resources available for targets in the cross-modality AB, thus leading to a severe interference effect and a larger AB. It demonstrates that sound can only enhance AB when attentional resources are previously invested and the ability to suppress interference are still sufficient after dividing attention in cross-modality.