Impaired Exogenous Attentional Orienting to Gaze Cues in Children With ADHD: Evidence From Inhibition of Return

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can produce attentional orienting in response to gaze cues, and to identify which type of attentional orienting is impaired and why. METHOD: Two experiments employed a gaze cue-target paradigm using inhibition of return (IOR) as an indicator of exogenous attentional orienting. Experiment 1 used normal upright gaze faces as cues. Experiment 2 used inverted gaze faces as cues. RESULTS: When normal gaze faces were used as the gaze cue, no IOR effect was observed in children with ADHD (Experiment 1); whereas when inverted gaze faces were used as the gaze cue, the IOR effect was produced in children with ADHD (Experiment 2). CONCLUSION: These results indicated that the ability to produce exogenous attentional orienting to the gaze cue is impaired in children with ADHD and that this impairment resulted from their reduced ability to exogenously orient to the intact face. These findings provide new evidence of social cognitive deficits and attentional orienting deficits in children with ADHD, and help provide support for children in educational settings.