Attentional Lapses in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Blank Rather Than Wandering Thoughts

Charlotte Van den Driessche; Mikaël Bastian; Hugo Peyre; Coline Stordeur; Éric Acquaviva; Sara Bahadori; Richard Delorme; Jérôme Sackur

doi:10.1177/0956797617708234

Attentional Lapses in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Blank Rather Than Wandering Thoughts

Charlotte Van den Driessche^1,2,3; Mikaël Bastian^1,4; Hugo Peyre^1,3; Coline Stordeur³; Éric Acquaviva³; Sara Bahadori³; Richard Delorme^3,5; Jérôme Sackur^1,6

¹ Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (LSCP), Département d’Études Cognitives de l’École Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University · ² Consciousness, Cognition, and Computation Group (CO3), Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN), Neuroscience Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles · ³ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Robert Debré Hospital, Paris, France · ⁴ Laboratoire Psychologie des Ages de la Vie, Université François Rabelais · ⁵ Human Genetics and Cognitive Functions Unit, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France · ⁶ Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de l’X, École Polytechnique

Psychological Science 2017

People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties sustaining their attention on external tasks. Such attentional lapses have often been characterized as the simple opposite of external sustained attention, but the different types of attentional lapses, and the subjective experiences to which they correspond, remain unspecified. In this study, we showed that unmedicated children (ages 6–12) with ADHD, when probed during a standard go/no-go task, reported more mind blanking (a mental state characterized by the absence of reportable content) than did control participants. This increase in mind blanking happened at the expense of both focused and wandering thoughts. We also found that methylphenidate reverted the level of mind blanking to baseline (i.e., the level of mind blanking reported by control children without ADHD). However, this restoration led to mind wandering more than to focused attention. In a second experiment, we extended these findings to adults who had subclinical ADHD. These results suggest that executive functions impaired in ADHD are required not only to sustain external attention but also to maintain an internal train of thought.

DOI: 10.1177/0956797617708234
Volume: 28 (10)
Pages: 1375-1386
Language: en
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