An Examination of Proactive and Retroactive Interference in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

One hypothesis regarding the etiology of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is to conceptualize the disorder as an inhibition disorder. Furthermore, it has been suggested that inhibition is not a single all-encompassing construct, but rather a series of closely related processes. There has been limited examination as to whether children with ADHD are impaired on measures of cognitive inhibition (also known as proactive and retroactive interference). This project examined children with ADHD\u27s susceptibility to proactive and retroactive interference in both verbal and visual-spatial modalities in comparison to typically developing children utilizing a novel coding system of the Children\u27s Memory Scale (CMS). It was found that children with ADHD exhibited greater levels of visual-spatial retroactive interference than their typically developing peers. Additionally, children with ADHD did not differ from controls on any measure of verbal interference. Implications for clinical practice and future directions for research are discussed