Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Selective auditory attention in college students with ADHD: Development of an ERP study and preliminary data

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Courtney Stevens¹ (cstevens@willamette.edu), Shane Barbour¹, Amanda Hampton Wray², Elif Isbell³; ¹Willamette University, ²University of Pittsburgh, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Communication Science & Disorders, ³University of California, Merced

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) indicate that early neural processing is modulated by selective attention. This effect is observed in neurotypical adults as well as neurotypical children as young as three years (Sanders et al., 2006). However, the magnitude of the effect of attention on early neural processing is reduced in some clinical populations (Stevens et al., 2006) and also correlates positively with nonverbal intelligence (Isbell et al., 2015). Limited prior research suggests reduced effects of selective auditory attention on early neural processing in children and adolescents with ADHD, however differences in nonverbal intelligence between the groups presents a confound (e.g., Gomes et al., 2012). The proposed study aims to address this confound by comparing the effects of selective attention on neural processing in adult college students, matched for nonverbal intelligence, both with and without an ADHD diagnosis. Using an established ERP dichotic listening task, participants will be cued to attend selectively to one of two simultaneously presented narratives differing in location (left/right speaker), narration voice (male/female), and content. Event-related potentials (ERPs) will be recorded to 100 msec probe stimuli embedded in the attended versus unattended story. Preliminary data from 10 college students with ADHD suggest reduced effects of selective auditory attention on neural processing relative to students without ADHD, even when matched for nonverbal intelligence. Data collection is ongoing and will assess whether this pattern holds, which will help clarify whether ADHD, independent of nonverbal intelligence, is associated with reduced effects of selective attention on early stages of neural processing.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Auditory