Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Fliednerstr. 21, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Kiel, Olshausenstr. 62, 24118 Kiel, Germany.
Clin Neurophysiol. 2018 Sep;129(9):1937-1946. doi: 10.1016/j.clinph.2018.06.019. Epub 2018 Jul 4.
Emotional dysregulation has emerged as a core symptom domain in adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, the pathophysiological underpinnings remain poorly understood. This study investigated attentional biases to positive and negative emotional words as possible contributing mechanisms.
Event-related potentials (ERPSs) and behavioral attention bias indices were recorded from 39 adult patients with ADHD and 41 healthy controls during a verbal dot-probe task with positive-neutral, negative-neutral, and neutral-neutral word pairs.
Cue-locked N2pc amplitudes indicated a significant attentional bias towards emotional words in patients with ADHD and healthy controls. In healthy controls, the bias was only significant in positive trials. In patients, the bias was associated with ADHD severity and self-reported poor emotion regulation skills. ADHD patients also exhibited reduced target-locked P1 amplitudes and inferior behavioral performance compared with healthy controls.
Our findings provide evidence of an attention bias to positive and negative emotional stimuli in adult patients with ADHD and adverse effects of emotional stimuli on task performance.
An attentional bias to emotional stimuli might contribute to emotional reactivity and dysregulation in adult patients with ADHD.
情绪调节障碍已成为注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）成人患者的核心症状领域。然而，其病理生理基础仍知之甚少。本研究探讨了对正性和负性情绪词的注意偏向，作为可能的促成机制。
在一项包含正性-中性、负性-中性和中性-中性词对的口头点探测任务中，记录了 39 名成年 ADHD 患者和 41 名健康对照者的事件相关电位（ERPs）和行为注意偏向指数。
线索锁定 N2pc 振幅表明，ADHD 患者和健康对照者对情绪词存在显著的注意偏向。在健康对照组中，这种偏向仅在正性试验中显著。在患者中，这种偏向与 ADHD 严重程度和自我报告的情绪调节技能差有关。ADHD 患者还表现出与健康对照组相比，目标锁定 P1 振幅降低和行为表现较差。
我们的发现为成年 ADHD 患者对正性和负性情绪刺激存在注意偏向以及情绪刺激对任务表现的不良影响提供了证据。
对情绪刺激的注意偏向可能导致成年 ADHD 患者的情绪反应和失调。
