TITLE:
Unconscious Priming of Focused Attention Reduces the Attention Deficits of ADHD Patients
AUTHORS:
Elaheh Hosseini, Otmar Bock, Monika Thomas
KEYWORDS:
ADHD, Therapy, Scrambled Sentence Task, Attention Component
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.6,
June
8,
2016
ABSTRACT: We have shown before that attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children suffer from deficits of sustained
attention, while divided, selective and distributed attention is largely
spared. The present study explores whether these deficits can be ameliorated by
unconscious priming of attention. Sixty children diagnosed with ADHD
participated, their age ranged between eight and twelve years. Participants
were primed with the scrambled sentence task: under the pretext of a language
comprehension task, they were exposed to words referring to focused attention
(group “focused”) or scattered attention (group “scattered”), or were not
exposed to attention-related words (group “control”). All three groups were
then assessed with the same battery of attention tests used in our earlier
study. We found that compared to the “control” group, performance was higher in
the “focused” group on tests of sustained, divided and distributed attention,
and was lower in the “scattered” group on all four tests. From this we conclude
that unconscious priming can modify the attention of ADHD children, and that
this modification extends to the one attention component that is most affected
by ADHD. Unconscious priming might therefore be an expedient supplementary
method for ADHD treatment, as it can be administered at virtually no cost
anytime, anywhere.