Attention and Inhibitory-Control play roles in Social Cognition of Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)

Rationale: Children with ADHD are known to have social deficits, though it is unclear how attention and inhibition differentially influence this difficulty. Research shows that emotion recognition is deficient in populations with attentional deficits throughout their lifetime. Additionally, inhibitory-control was found to correlate with social communication skills in young children at the beginning stages of inhibitory-control development. It, however, is unknown how attention and inhibitory-control symptoms relate to social cognition in children with ADHD.

Objective: The current study aimed to explore how social cognition is affected by ADHD symptoms, hypothesizing that attention impacts emotional recognition while inhibitory-control is more related to adaptive communication abilities.

Method: Twenty-six children with ADHD and 29 age and IQ matched controls underwent tests of attention, inhibitory-control, emotion-recognition in facial expressions and body motion, and social communication skills.

Results: Regression models showed that attention accuracy moderated the relationship between ADHD and emotional facial and body motion recognition response times (R²=.43, p<.001; R²=.44, p<.001), such that attention accuracy predicted emotion recognition only among the ADHD group; while inhibitory-control accuracy moderated the relationship social communication of children with ADHD (R²=.22, p<.05), such that only among children with ADHD, and not in controls, those with average or low inhibition-control children showed diminished social communication skills.

Conclusions: Results suggest that core attentional and inhibition symptoms of childhood ADHD affect social cognition differentially, possibly suggesting a dual hierarchical factor structure for social competence in childhood ADHD.