Abstract

ASSEF, Ellen Carolina dos Santos; CAPOVILLA, Alessandra Gotuzo Seabra  and  CAPOVILLA, Fernando César. Inhibitory control assessment in adhd using the semantic genera-tion test. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2007, vol.9, n.1, pp. 61-74. ISSN 1516-3687.

Inhibitory control is a component of executive functions, and refers to the ability of inhibiting competitive responses. It is frequently hampered in Attention Deficit Hiperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It may be assessed using scores and reaction times in semantic generation tasks. In such tasks participants are exposed to noun pictures and are expected to pronounce a pertinent verb according to each noun. ADHD patients may have difficulty with high-selection nouns, which evoke several verbs, but not with low-selection nouns, which evoke few verbs. This study investigated psychometric properties of a Computerized Semantic Genera - tion Test. The test was applied to 62 8-12 year-old children, 31 of them with an ADHD psy - chiatric diagnosis, and 31 with no such diagnosis. Precision analyses showed very satisfactory coefficients. ADHD children presented greater average reaction time under high-selection nouns than that of non-ADHD children. Decreased ability to select among verbs suggests ADHD children have difficulty in inhibiting concurrent responses.

Keywords : Inhibitory control; Hiperactivity; Neuropsychological assessment; Precision; Validity.

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