TY - JOUR
T1 - Do Childhood Emotional Lability and ADHD Symptoms Have Shared Neuropsychological Roots?
AU - Van Liefferinge, Dagmar
AU - Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J.S.
AU - Danckaerts, Marina
AU - Van Broeck, Nady
AU - van der Oord, Saskia
N1 - Funding Information:
Marina Danckaerts declares the following competing interests: Fees for speaking, consultancy, research funding and conference support from Shire and Janssen Cilag Pharma; Book royalties from OUP and Van Gorcum; Consultancy from Neurotech solutions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Emotional Lability (EL) is a source of impairment in multiple mental disorders of children, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It has been proposed that the overlap between EL and ADHD symptoms is the result of common neuropsychological deficits. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis by using a multi-method approach. In a mixed sample of 61 children (49 community sample and 12 children with an ADHD diagnosis) aged between 8 and 12 years, we examined the relationship between parental reports of ADHD and EL, real-time children’s emotional expressions in an experimental context, children’s performance on neuropsychological tasks and parental ratings of neuropsychological functioning. Parental EL ratings were significantly predicted by task-based reaction time variability and by questionnaire measures of Self-Direction & Organization and Arousal Regulation. Parental EL ratings were also significantly related to both ADHD symptom dimensions. After controlling for shared neuropsychological factors, ADHD symptoms no longer predicted parental EL ratings. Neuropsychological task performance was not significantly related to real time emotional expressions. However, positive emotional expressions were significantly predicted by higher parental ratings of Cognition and negative emotional expressions by parental ratings of low Effort engagement – accounting for some of the correlation with ADHD symptoms. The current results highlight the plausible role of cognitive energetic processes in explaining the EL and ADHD symptom association.
AB - Emotional Lability (EL) is a source of impairment in multiple mental disorders of children, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It has been proposed that the overlap between EL and ADHD symptoms is the result of common neuropsychological deficits. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis by using a multi-method approach. In a mixed sample of 61 children (49 community sample and 12 children with an ADHD diagnosis) aged between 8 and 12 years, we examined the relationship between parental reports of ADHD and EL, real-time children’s emotional expressions in an experimental context, children’s performance on neuropsychological tasks and parental ratings of neuropsychological functioning. Parental EL ratings were significantly predicted by task-based reaction time variability and by questionnaire measures of Self-Direction & Organization and Arousal Regulation. Parental EL ratings were also significantly related to both ADHD symptom dimensions. After controlling for shared neuropsychological factors, ADHD symptoms no longer predicted parental EL ratings. Neuropsychological task performance was not significantly related to real time emotional expressions. However, positive emotional expressions were significantly predicted by higher parental ratings of Cognition and negative emotional expressions by parental ratings of low Effort engagement – accounting for some of the correlation with ADHD symptoms. The current results highlight the plausible role of cognitive energetic processes in explaining the EL and ADHD symptom association.
KW - Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
KW - Emotional lability
KW - Multi-method approach
KW - Neuropsychological functioning
KW - Real-time measures
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100182734&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10862-020-09859-8
DO - 10.1007/s10862-020-09859-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100182734
SN - 0882-2689
JO - JOURNAL OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT
JF - JOURNAL OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT
ER -