Unconscious Priming of Focused Attention Reduces the Attention Deficits of ADHD Patients

Elaheh Hosseini, Otmar Leo Bock, Monika Thomas

    Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungBegutachtung

    Abstract

    We have shown before that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children suffer from
    deficits of sustained attention, while divided, selective and distributed attention is largely spared.
    The present study explores whether these deficits can be ameliorated by unconscious priming of
    attention. Sixty children diagnosed with ADHD participated, their age ranged between eight and
    twelve years. Participants were primed with the scrambled sentence task: under the pretext of a
    language comprehension task, they were exposed to words referring to focused attention (group
    “focused”) or scattered attention (group “scattered”), or were not exposed to attention-related
    words (group “control”). All three groups were then assessed with the same battery of attention
    tests used in our earlier study. We found that compared to the “control” group, performance was
    higher in the “focused” group on tests of sustained, divided and distributed attention, and was
    lower in the “scattered” group on all four tests. From this we conclude that unconscious priming
    can modify the attention of ADHD children, and that this modification extends to the one attention
    component that is most affected by ADHD. Unconscious priming might therefore be an expedient
    supplementary method for ADHD treatment, as it can be administered at virtually no cost anytime,
    anywhere.
    OriginalspracheDeutsch
    ZeitschriftPsychology
    Jahrgang7
    Ausgabenummer6
    Seiten (von - bis)815-819
    Seitenumfang5
    ISSN2152-7180
    DOIs
    PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 06.2016

    Zitation