School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Neuropsychologia. 2010 Apr;48(5):1255-64. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.12.026. Epub 2009 Dec 30.
Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often show spatial attentional deficits, exhibiting a subtle rightwards bias, possibly due to dysfunction within the right hemisphere fronto-parietal network. Approximately 50% of children with ADHD also show signs of movement dysfunction. The nature of this movement dysfunction and possible interactions with spatial attention difficulties has not been clearly described. This study compared 31 children with and 31 children without ADHD on a movement kinematic task that tested hand-drawing movement precision. Participants used an electronic pen on a digitizing tablet. The pen tip position was sampled as X and Y coordinates at 200Hz. The task was to join targets of either 10 or 20mm diameter that were separated by a distance of 62.5 or 125 mm. Constant error in the X and Y planes, peak absolute velocity and acceleration, movement time, the number of pauses and pause time were analysed. Apart from a significantly increased rate of acceleration across all conditions, the children with ADHD demonstrated no temporal difficulties with the task; rather they showed subtle spatial difficulties, possibly suggestive of cerebellar involvement. The children with ADHD showed difficulties in accuracy of movement towards the right. They were less accurate in the X plane when moving towards the right-sided targets over the long distance. Greater variability in target accuracy was shown when moving towards the small target on the right side. The children with ADHD made significantly more pauses on the left target, when preparing the right movement, than the control group. These results suggest that the subtle spatial bias towards the right that has been demonstrated in ADHD in spatial attention also extends into the continuous movement domain.
患有注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）的儿童通常表现出空间注意力缺陷，表现出微妙的右偏，可能是由于右半球额顶网络功能障碍所致。大约 50%的 ADHD 儿童也表现出运动功能障碍的迹象。这种运动功能障碍的性质以及与空间注意力困难的可能相互作用尚未得到明确描述。本研究比较了 31 名患有和不患有 ADHD 的儿童在一项运动运动学任务上的表现，该任务测试了手绘图运动精度。参与者使用电子笔在数字化仪上进行绘图。笔尖位置以 X 和 Y 坐标在 200Hz 时被采样。任务是连接直径为 10 或 20mm 的目标，目标之间的距离为 62.5 或 125mm。分析了 X 和 Y 平面的恒定误差、峰值绝对速度和加速度、运动时间、暂停次数和暂停时间。除了所有条件下加速度的显著增加外，ADHD 儿童在任务中没有表现出明显的时间困难；相反，他们表现出微妙的空间困难，可能提示小脑参与。ADHD 儿童在向右侧运动的准确性方面存在困难。当向远距离的右侧目标移动时，他们在 X 平面上的准确性较差。当向右侧的小目标移动时，目标准确性的变化更大。当准备右侧运动时，ADHD 儿童在左侧目标上停顿的次数明显多于对照组。这些结果表明，ADHD 儿童在空间注意力中表现出的微妙的右偏空间偏向也延伸到了连续运动领域。
