The role of divided attention and selective attention in time perception deficit of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

Time deficit in people with ADHD has been consistently found, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate whether divided attention and selective attention are the causes for the deficit; and whether duration judgment performance was related to everyday temporal behaviour. 20 children with ADHD and 23 control children (mean age = 9 years 5 months) matched on age and IQ with no significant difference in working memory were tested. Experiment 1 used retrospective and prospective paradigms with arithmetic tasks. We compared time reproduction and arithmetic performances of the two groups across paradigms and found the expected interaction on the arithmetic performance but not the main effects of group or paradigm, and the interaction on time reproduction. Experiment 2 consisted of different event structures with simple motor tasks. We compared time reproduction of the two groups across structures and found the expected main effect of group and interaction effect but not main effect of structures. Furthermore, our results only provided limited support for the relationship between duration judgment and everyday temporal behaviour. The present findings suggest that aspects of attention remains promising as potential causes for time deficit in ADHD.