The ability of boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to process emotional information of varying complexity

Abstract

Since Lois Murphy (1937) reported that young preschool children demonstrate sympathetic responses to peers who are in distress, there has been a continuing investigation of two resulting fundamental questions: Are there stable individual differences in sympathetic responsiveness to another person's emotional state? And, by what mechanism do children come to feel the same emotion as another person or act appropriately in response to someone in distress? These questions have been approached by a number of contributors from various theoretical positions which this paper will review. Less represented in the growing body of literature regarding emotion is reference to the study of emotions with specific populations. This research examined the ability of boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to process three types of emotional tasks which vary in terms of their respective degrees of complexity. Those tasks included the following: Facial Expression Identification; Emotion Statement Identification; and the partial administration of the Children's Apperceptive Story Telling test (CAST; Schneider, 1989). Boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder had significantly more difficulty on all three tasks. On the Facial Expression Identification Task, ADHD participants identified significantly fewer facial expressions than non ADHD participants. Phi Value for Facial Expression Identification was .35. ADHD students were significantly less accurate at Emotion Statement Identification. Moreover, the younger participants, particularly the younger ADHD participants, were significantly less accurate at Facial Expression Identification than their older counterparts. Eta values for group and grade main effects for the Emotion Statement Identification task .32 and .22 respectfully. The Cast Involved three measures, namely Positive Affect, Negative Affect, and Verbosity. The non ADHD group outperformed the ADHD group on all three measures. Eta values for group main effects for Positive Affect and Negative Affect were .84 and .75 respectively. Eta values for group and grade main effects for Verbosity were .67 and .28 respectively. Grade 8 boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder significantly outperformed their grade 4 counterparts on all three CAST tasks.