Visual and auditory habituation processes: A comparison of ADHD adults and controls.
Item
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Title
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Visual and auditory habituation processes: A comparison of ADHD adults and controls.
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Identifier
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AAI3304499
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identifier
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3304499
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Creator
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Massa, Jacqueline.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Hilary T. Gomes
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Cognitive | Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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Habituation has an important role in attention. By reducing our sensitivity to a constant source of stimulation, it frees up attention resources to process new distinct items. Individuals with damage to frontal lobe brain regions have difficulty habituating to irrelevant stimuli and their behavior is marked by distractibility, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is thought to be caused by a disruption in frontal lobe functioning and is also marked by distractibility, hyperactivity and impulsivity. As there are similar attentional and behavioral disruptions in both disorders it is speculated that incomplete or slowed habituation may be an important factor in ADHD. Incomplete or slowed habituation may result in difficulties sustaining attention on tasks due to an inability to modulate the repeated intrusion of irrelevant stimuli. The present study attempted to test this hypothesis by examining visual and auditory habituation processes and correlating self-reports of sensory gating disturbances with response habituation. A total of 41 adults (21 ADHD and 20 Controls) participated in the study. Troxler fading, a phenomenon of visual perception, in which an object in peripheral vision fades if one fixates on a central point, was employed to measure visual habituation. A modified auditory Troxler fading task was created for this experiment to measure auditory habituation. Findings of the present study replicated previous research which found slowed visual habituation to stationary stimuli in children with ADHD (see Jansiewicz et al., 2004). The present study also extended prior research and found that adults with ADHD were slower to habituate to auditory stationary stimuli. In addition, and unexpected, adults with ADHD were quicker to respond to novel auditory moving stimuli suggesting the presence of comorbid auditory processing difficulties. The self-reported ratings of sensory gating disturbances were significantly greater for individuals with ADHD. The SGI was also significantly correlated with visual and auditory habituation. These findings further support impaired auditory and visual habituation in ADHD. Further investigation of habituation processes should combine ERP and fMRI measures to explore the underlying neural components.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
