Impaired oculomotor response inhibition in children of alcoholics: The role of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the project was to determine whether children at high risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD) are impaired at performing oculomotor response inhibition tasks sensitive to detecting prefrontal cortex dysfunction.

Methods: Three antisaccade tasks were administered to 67 10-12-year-old children having fathers with AUD and 12 children whose fathers had no psychiatric disorder.

Results: Children of AUD+ fathers performed similar to children of AUD- fathers on measures of response latency and gain to target. Peak velocity discriminated the two groups on only one task. Children of AUD+ fathers exhibited a higher rate of prosaccade errors on the most difficult antisaccade task. Within the AUD+ group of men, offspring who qualified for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; N = 13) exhibited more response suppression errors than children without ADHD on two of three tasks. No differences were observed between children without ADHD whose fathers either qualified for AUD+ or had no psychiatric disorder.

Conclusion: Inhibiting a response to a prepotent stimulus in children of AUD+ fathers is circumscribed to ADHD youths. These findings suggest that frontal-striatal mechanisms may underlie the risk for AUD among ADHD children.