Visuospatial working memory in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Characterizing path length and path crossings as mechanisms of impairment

Abstract

Objective: A growing body of research provides reliable evidence of moderate to large magnitude deficits in the visuospatial (VS) working memory (WM) of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), relative to typically developing (TD) children. Studies of ADHD-related Visuo-spatial Working Memory (VS-WM) functioning most often present sequential presentations of VS stimuli and examine general performance characteristics. Only a few studies have examined the effects of varying VS-WM task parameters on performance in children with ADHD, despite evidence from basic-cognitive research that indicates methodological heterogeneity in VS-WM task parameters yields significant performance variability that is associated with underlying mechanistic processes. This study is the first to examine the effect of the task parameters path characteristics and path crossings on performance in children with ADHD and TD children.

Method: School-aged children with ADHD (n = 50) and TD children (n = 59) completed a VS-WM task that varied by path lengths and path crossings.

Results: Multilevel analyses indicated a negative effect of relatively long paths on VS-WM performance of both TD children and children with ADHD, and a negative effect of increasing path crossings that appears to be unique to TD children and dependent on path length.

Conclusions: Overall, findings appear to suggest that school-aged children engage in dynamic rehearsal of VS information (i.e., mental rehearsal of path sequences), rather than static rehearsal (i.e., rehearsal of a gestalt). Moreover, ADHD-related VS-WM deficits are most likely to yield real-world impairments when information is presented with relatively long path lengths. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).