The performance of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in a visual attention test

Line bisection test is used for detecting inattention. In this test normal people usually show a rightward bias which indicates right hemisphere dominancy for visuo-spatial attention processing. The performance of people with Attention deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in these kinds of visuo-spatial tests is different from normal people. The difference could be as a result of right hemisphere deficit in cases with ADHD. The aim of this study is comparing visuo-spatial attention in children with ADHD-combined subtype and normal children.

In this cross-sectional study, the performance of 15 children with ADHD-combined subtype was compared with the performance of 15 children while matched for age, sex and IQ. The direction of each group bias was determined in line bisection test.

In ADHD-combined subtype group, bisected lines showed significant right side bias (p=0.005). Normal group also showed a rightward bias but it was not significant (p=0.08). In addition there was no significant difference between the two groups performance in this test.

Both normal and ADHD-combined subtype groups showed a rightward bias in line bisection test and there was no difference between the two groups performance. More future studies are needed.