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. 2010;35(5):494-505.
doi: 10.1080/87565641.2010.494750.

Two forms of implicit learning in childhood ADHD

Kelly Anne Barnes  1 , James H Howard Jr, Darlene V Howard, Laura Kenealy, Chandan J Vaidya
Affiliations

Two forms of implicit learning in childhood ADHD

Kelly Anne Barnes et al. Dev Neuropsychol. 2010.

Abstract

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity mediated by frontal-striatal-cerebellar dysfunction. These circuits support implicit learning of perceptual-motor sequences but not visual-spatial context. ADHD and control children performed the Alternating Serial Reaction Time (ASRT) task, a measure of sequence learning, and the Contextual Cueing (CC) task, a measure of spatial contextual learning. Relative to controls, children with ADHD showed inconsistent ASRT learning but did not differ on CC learning. Thus, implicit sequence learning, a cognitive process mediated by frontal-striatal-cerebellar circuitry that is not under executive control, was atypical in ADHD.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Median response time (in milliseconds) on the ASRT task as a function of epoch and trial type for the ADHD and control groups.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Median response time (in seconds) on the CC task as a function of epoch and configuration for the ADHD and control groups.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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