Fournier Anaïs, Gauthier Bruno, Guay Marie-Claude, Parent Véronique
Department of Psychology, University of Sherbrooke, Longueuil, QC J4K 0A8, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Laval Campus, Laval, QC H7N 0B6, Canada.
Brain Sci. 2020 Mar 17;10(3):172. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10030172.
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often associated with frontal executive impairment in children. Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and anxiety disorders (AD) frequently accompany ADHD, but the impact of these comorbid disorders on cognition remains elusive. The five-point test (FPT), a design fluency task, has been shown to be sensitive to neurological damage, specifically to frontal lobe lesions in patients with brain injuries. The purpose of this study was to compare the performances of neurotypical children with that of children with ADHD, ADHD-ODD, and ADHD-AD on the FPT in order to examine whether these groups could be distinguished from one another based on their cognitive profile.
A total of 111 children aged 8 to 11 years old participated in the study. Six measures from the FPT were used to characterize their performance.
Statistically significant differences between groups were observed for five of the six FPT measures. Essentially, children with ADHD-ODD made more repeated designs than the three other groups (control > 0.001, ADHD = 0.008, ADHD-AD = 0.008), while children with ADHD-AD produced fewer total and correct designs than the control and ADHD groups ( = 0.009).
This suggests that comorbidities have an additive impact on the cognitive profile of children with ADHD. Design fluency may be a sensitive measure for capturing the subtle cognitive deficits that are likely to be involved in these disorders.
注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）在儿童中常与额叶执行功能损害相关。对立违抗性障碍（ODD）和焦虑症（AD）常伴随ADHD出现，但这些共病对认知的影响仍不明确。五点测试（FPT）是一种设计流畅性任务，已被证明对神经损伤敏感，特别是对脑损伤患者的额叶病变敏感。本研究的目的是比较神经发育正常儿童与患有ADHD、ADHD-ODD和ADHD-AD的儿童在FPT上的表现，以检查这些组是否可以根据其认知特征相互区分。
共有111名8至11岁的儿童参与了该研究。使用FPT的六项指标来表征他们的表现。
在FPT的六项指标中的五项上观察到了组间的统计学显著差异。本质上，患有ADHD-ODD的儿童比其他三组（对照组>0.001，ADHD组=0.008，ADHD-AD组=0.008）做出了更多重复设计，而患有ADHD-AD的儿童比对照组和ADHD组产生的总设计和正确设计更少（=0.009）。
这表明共病对ADHD儿童的认知特征有累加影响。设计流畅性可能是一种敏感的测量方法，用于捕捉这些疾病可能涉及的细微认知缺陷。
