Dissociation of Sensitivity and Response Bias in Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder During Central Auditory Masking

Forty-three children (ages 7.0-14.5 years old) with and without attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), combined type had thresholds for detection of a 500-Hz pure tone estimated with and without a noise masker in the contralateral ear. The ear receiving the signal in the masked condition was varied randomly. A single-interval maximum-likelihood method estimated thresholds and false-alarm rate. Whereas the increase in threshold in children with ADHD in the presence of contralateral masking was comparable with controls, the increase in false-alarm rate was significantly greater. This dissociation between changes in sensitivity and response bias in the presence of masking noise supports suggestions that children with ADHD have difficulty inhibiting maladaptive responses and indicates that this deficit is quantifiable using psychoacoustic methods.