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. 2025 Jul;56(4):327-341.
doi: 10.1177/15500594241304492. Epub 2024 Dec 19.

Facial Affect Recognition and Executive Function Abnormalities in ADHD Subjects: An ERP Study

Saghar Vosough  1 , Gian Candrian  2 , Johannes Kasper  3 , Hossam Abdel Rehim  4 , Dominique Eich  5 , Andreas Müller  2 , Lutz Jäncke  1
Affiliations

Facial Affect Recognition and Executive Function Abnormalities in ADHD Subjects: An ERP Study

Saghar Vosough et al. Clin EEG Neurosci. 2025 Jul.

Abstract

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects approximately 12% of children worldwide. With a 50% chance of persistence into adulthood and associations with impairments in various domains, including social and emotional ones, early diagnosis is crucial. The exact neural substrates of ADHD are still unclear. This study aimed to reassess the behavioral and neural metrics of executive functions and neural substrates of facial affect recognition. A total of 117 ADHD patients and 183 healthy controls were evaluated by two Go/NoGo tasks: the classic visual continuous performance test and the emotional continuous performance test, which requires facial affect encoding. Group differences between ADHD subjects and healthy controls were assessed using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with age and sex included as covariates. Dependent variables comprised behavioral (number of omission and commission errors, reaction time, and reaction time variability) and neurophysiological measures (event-related potentials [ERPs]). As the main result, we identified significant differences between ADHD patients and healthy controls in all behavioral metrics, one neural marker of action inhibition (P3d) and the facial processing marker (N170). The differences were moderate-to-large when expressed as effect size measures in behavioral variables and small-to-moderate for neurophysiological variables. The small-to-moderate effect sizes obtained from the neurophysiological measures suggest that ERPs are insufficient as sole markers for effectively screening emotion and face processing abnormalities in ADHD.

Keywords: ECPT; ERP; VCPT; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; facial affect recognition‌.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
VCPT and ECPT conditions, including Go, NoGo, and distractor/ignore.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The ERP difference curves (N2d, P3d) for the ADHD and control groups. The ERPs after the second stimulus (at 1400 ms) in ECPT and VCPT are displayed.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The N2d and P3d ERP topography plots for ADHD and control groups in ECPT and VCPT tasks are presented.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
The N170 ERP curves in ECPT and VCPT after the second stimulus (at 1400 ms) for both T5-T6 (left-right hemispheres) electrode sites in groups (ADHD and control) and conditions (Go and NoGo) are presented.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
N170 ERP topography plot in the ECPT and VCPT tasks between groups (ADHD and control) and conditions (Go and NoGo).
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