Comparison of Sensitivity to Reward and Punishment, Response Inhibition and Sustained Attention Between School Boys With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Sluggish Cognitive Tempo

 Recent studies have identified a disorder called Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) which has similarities with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in attentional problems and often is mistakenly diagnosed as ADHD. Attentional problems cause executive dysfunction and often affect the hot and cold executive functions. This study aims to compare the sensitivity to reward and punishment, response inhibition and sustained attention between school boys with ADHD and SCT.

 This is a casual-comparative study. Participants were 100 elementary school male students (50 with ADHD and 50 with SCT) in Tabriz, Iran in the academic year 2019-20, who were selected through a screening method and based on the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham-IV (SNAP-IV) and the SCT questionnaires. The Balloon analogue risk task was used to measure the sensitivity to reward and punishment, while the continuous performance test was used to measure response inhibition and sustained attention. For data analysis, multivariate analysis of variance was performed in SPSS v.20 software.

 The boys with ADHD had higher scores in sensitivity to reward, while those with SCT had higher scores in sensitivity to punishment. Moreover, the boys with ADHD had deficits in response inhibition, while those with SCT had deficits in sustained attention (P<0.0001).

 It seems that school boys with SCT have deficits in hot executive functions, and those with ADHD have problems in cold executive functions.