BACKGROUND Task switch protocols are frequently used in the assessment of cognitive control, both in clinical and non-clinical populations. These protocols frequently confound task switch and attentional set shift. The current study investigated the ability of adult ADHD patients to shift attentional set in the context of switching tasks. METHOD We tested 38 adults with ADHD and 39 control adults with an extensive diagnostic battery and a task switch protocol without proactive interference. The experiment combined orthogonally task-switch vs. repetition, and attentional set shift vs. no shift. Each experimental stimulus had global and local features (Hierarchical/"Navon" stimuli), associated with corresponding attentional sets. RESULTS ADHD patients were slower than controls in task switch trials with a simultaneous shift of attention between global/local attentional sets. This also correlated significantly with diagnostic scales for ADHD symptoms. The patients had more variable reaction times, but when the attentional set was kept constant neither were they significantly slower nor showed higher task switch costs. CONCLUSION ADHD is associated with a deficit in flexible deployment of attention to varying sources of stimulus information.

中文翻译：

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成人多动症的注意力集中转移的选择性障碍。

背景技术任务切换协议经常在临床和非临床人群中用于认知控制的评估中。这些协议经常会混淆任务切换和注意力转移。当前的研究调查了成年多动症患者在转移任务中转移注意力的能力。方法我们测试了38名ADHD成年人和39名对照成年人，他们使用了广泛的诊断电池和任务切换协议，没有进行主动干预。实验结合了正交任务切换与重复，注意集移位与无移位的组合。每个实验刺激都具有全局和局部特征（分层/“ Navon”刺激），并与相应的注意力集相关联。结果在任务转换试验中，ADHD患者比对照组慢，同时在全局/局部注意力集中同时转移了注意力。这也与ADHD症状的诊断量表显着相关。患者的反应时间可变得多，但是当注意力集中保持不变时，他们的速度和速度都不会显着降低。结论注意力缺陷多动症与对各种刺激信息来源的灵活注意力缺乏有关。