Attentional networks in preschool children with and without early symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder who participated in a working memory training program

Abstract

Attention is an important cognitive process for daily life because it allows us to be expectant to situations in the environment and to select some information from many options that are presented simultaneously. It is a process that is affected in neurodevelopmental problems such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There is a lot of knowledge about cognitive difficulties in children diagnosed with ADHD, but little is known about what happens during the development of this disorder, especially in the stages prior to being diagnosed or at preschool stages. For this reason, we decided to study the attention, based on the paradigm of attentional networks, in preschool children with both typical development and early symptoms of ADHD. As the brain regions that improve the activity after working memory training are similar to the regions that are activated in attentional tasks, we proposed that working memory training could improve attention. To achieve this objective we evaluate attention (Attentional network task, ANT) and working memory (verbal and visuospatial) before and after an intensive computer-based working memory training. The results of the study showed that children with early symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder have a decrease in modulation of the orienting and executive attentional networks, but not the alerting network, in comparison with typical development children. Additionally, we found that working memory training can improve the modulation of executive attentional network in children with early symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, but not in typically developing children. These results show the importance of studying the course of abnormal development of attention, in stages prior to the diagnosis of ADHD. Additionally, we suggest working memory training as a method to improve some difficulties in modulating attention in children with early symptoms of ADHD.