Investigating Working Memory Deficits in School-Age Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: An Event-Related Potentials Study During Delayed-Match-to-Sample Task
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online December, 2024
Investigating Working Memory Deficits in School-Age Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: An Event-Related Potentials Study During Delayed-Match-to-Sample Task
To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying working memory (WM) deficits in children with ADHD.
Method:
WM was compared between thirty-four children with ADHD and thirty-four matched controls using neuropsychological tests, spatial and verbal versions of modified delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) tasks, and the event-related potential technique.
Results:
Children with ADHD demonstrated poor behavioral performance, delayed P3 latencies in high-load spatial modified DMTS tasks during encoding, and delayed P2 and N2 latencies during retrieval in spatial modified DMTS tasks. In high-load verbal modified DMTS tasks during encoding, they showed a smaller P3 amplitude.
Discussion:
Pronounced deficits in the central executive system in children with ADHD were exhibited by neuropsychological tests and the modified DMTS task. Children with ADHD exhibited a slowing of processing speed during encoding. Under high-load conditions, they showed a reduced P3 amplitude during retrieval, suggesting reduced neural resource allocation was available when the central executive of the working memory was heavily loaded.
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