Motivation 和 Cognitive Control in Children With 和 Without ADHD

ADHD is one of the most common childhood disorders. A diverse range of behavioral symptoms characterizes this neurodevelopmental disorder, including constant fidgeting or restlessness, 很难集中精力, 自我控制缺陷, 情感上的困难. Differences in executive function may play a key role in ADHD. Executive function encompasses goal-oriented behavior such as planning, 思维灵活性, 组织, 工作记忆, 抑制性控制. Decreased inhibitory control has been underlined as a core deficit in ADHD, which involves a decreased ability to stop an inappropriate but dominant response. 然而, motivation impairments or under-responsivity to incentives may be underlying factors in this disorder, consistent with potentially disrupted dopamine in individuals with ADHD. 然而,, there has been little research on the motivation-cognitive control interaction in ADHD 和 how this interaction is affected in children.
 

The present study is investigating motivation-cognitive control interaction in a sample of children ages 8-16 years with 和 without ADHD. 在这项研究中, participants are completing a reward-incentivized cognitive control task called the AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT). The AX-CPT is a cue-probe task allowing for characterization of the timing of cognitive control – specifically, separating between preparatory or proactive cognitive control, in response to the anticipatory cue, 与无功控制相比, allocated in response to the later target. Differences in proactive 和 reactive cognitive control have been previously characterized with age 和 psychopathology, 和 in neurotypical individuals, evidence suggests that reward might specifically benefit preparatory or proactive control. Along with AX-CPT performance, we are collecting pupillometry data using an eye-tracker. Changes in pupil dilation are an established measure of cognitive effort with high temporal resolution. We are interested in using both task 和 pupil measures to investigate whether children with ADHD show similar or different cognitive control timing, as well as increases in proactive control with reward, 对于神经正常的孩子来说.