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Attention Disorders

Reaction Time and Attention: Toward a New Standard in the Assessment of ADHD? A Pilot Study
Gabriel G. De la Torre, Juan M. Barroso, José León-Carrión, José M. Mestre and Rocío Guil Bozal
Journal of Attention Disorders published online 26 December 2012
DOI: 10.1177/1087054712466440

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466440
rnal of Attention DisordersG. De la Torre et al.
© 2012 SAGE Publications

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Journal of Attention Disorders

Reaction Time and Attention:  Toward

XX(X) 1­–9
© 2012 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1087054712466440
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ADHD? A Pilot Study

Gabriel G. De la Torre1, Juan M. Barroso2, José León-Carrión2,

Jose M. Mestre1, and Rocío Guil Bozal1

Abstract
This pilot study shows results of an experiment comparing reaction times (RTs) and attentional performance between
an ADHD group of 30 children and 30 controls, both Spanish speaking. The experiment was carried out using the Seville
computerized neuropsychological battery (SNB). Objective: This study had two goals: One was to test sensitivity of
SNB for attention deficits in ADHD and the second was to detect differences in RTs between ADHD and controls.
Possible explanations and implications of such differences are also discussed. Method: SNB computerized system was
used to assess RTs and accuracy, and alternate forms of continuous performance task were used. Results: Results showed
high sensitivity of some of the SNB tests, especially cancellation tests. RTs were significantly different between groups.
Conclusion: SNB represents a helpful tool for detection of attention deficits, and RT indices represent the most significant
variable in differentiation of both groups studied. (J. of Att. Dis. 2012; XX(X) 1-XX)

Keywords
ADHD, response inhibition, computer attention training, time perspective

Introduction age and developmental stage of the child before being

Multiple investigators have evaluated differences in neuro-
psychological test performance among cultural and ethnic
minorities (Ardila, 1995; Manly et al., 1998; Wong, Strickland,
Fletcher-Janzen, Ardila, & Reynolds, 2000). Yet to date, com-
paratively few assessment measures have been developed for,
adapted to, or normalized among historically underrepre-
sented populations. The relative dearth of culturally fair tests
is of particular concern for non-U.S.-born-Spanish-speaking
persons such as Hispanics. Hispanics are one of the most
rapidly growing ethnic groups in the United States, with one
in four Americans expected to be Hispanic by 2050. Some
important work has been done by specialists to develop better
approaches to Spanish-speaking patients (Judd et al., 2009).
According to the National Academy of Neuropsychology, it is
preferable for neuropsychologists to provide services directly
in the language of evaluation rather than working through
interpreters and translators (American Psychological
Association, 1993, 2002).
ADHD is currently one of the most frequent causes of
neuropsychological consultation; this is also true in Hispanics
and the Spanish-speaking population. ADHD is character-
ized by a persistent pattern of inattention or hyperactivity–
impulsivity. These features must be inappropriate for the
considered as clinically significant (American Psychiatric
Association, 2000).
Studies of the cognitive profiles generally present in
cases of ADHD indicate poor performance across multiple
executive functions and other domains (Barkley, 1997;
Kuntsi, McLoughlin, & Asherson, 2006; Willcutt, Doyle,
Nigg, Faraone, & Pennington, 2005). A recent, detailed
investigation confirmed earlier observations that the largest
differences between children with ADHD and control chil-
dren across several commonly used cognitive tasks occur in
the domain of reaction time (RT) variability (Klein,
Wendling, Huettner, Ruder, & Peper, 2006). The proposed
underlying causes of RT variability in ADHD continue to be
debated (Bellgrove, Hawi, Kirley, Gill, & Robertson, 2005;
Castellanos et al., 2005; Castellanos & Tannock, 2002;
Kuntsi et al., 2006). ADHD is also linked to performance
deficits in inhibitory control tasks (Willcutt et al., 2005).
1
University of Cádiz, Puerto Real, Spain
2
University of Seville, Spain
Corresponding Author:
Gabriel G. De la Torre, University of Cádiz, Facultad Ciencias de la
Educación, Campus Puerto Real, 11519 Spain
Email: gabriel.delatorre@uca.es

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2 Journal of Attention Disorders XX(X)
Recent meta-analyses indicated that poor performance
among ADHD sufferers on the stop task, which involves the
suppression of an ongoing response, is not caused by real
differences in inhibition of stopping between the ADHD
and control groups but reflects differences in the groups’
mean RTs in response to “go” stimuli (Alderson, Rapport,
& Koefler, 2007; Lijffijt, Kenemans, Verbaten, & Van,
2005). In clinical practice, the continuous performance test
(CPT; Conners, 1995) is the most frequently used tool for
assessing children with ADHD (DuPaul, Anastopoulos,
Shelton, Guevremont, & Metevia, 1992). The CPT has
been widely used in child psychopathology research,
including studies on children at risk of schizophrenia
(Cornblatt & Erlenmeyer-Kimling, 1985), children with
learning disabilities (Swanson et al., 1991), and other dis-
orders. The CPT has various forms, but all instruct the
child to follow a sequence of stimuli visually or by hearing;
participants are required to respond continuously accord-
ing to a certain predefined goal and inhibit responses in the
presence of various target stimuli. The indices studied most
frequently in CPT paradigms are omissions and errors, and
more recently, RT.
As stated above, not many common tests used to assess
attention in U.S. children are available for Spanish-speaking
children or have been appropriately normed for this popula-
tion, in either the United States or Latin America. Not many
tests of attention are available for Spanish-speaking people.
The CPT has not been translated into Spanish, nor have nor-
mative CPT data been collected from Spanish-speaking
people to date. Thus, the need for specific tests for Spanish-
speaking people in Spain, Latin America, and the United
States should represent an important goal in current neuro-
psychological assessment research. There is a steadily
emerging literature relating to clinical and technical issues
in cross-cultural neuropsychological testing (Cofresi &
Gorman, 2004; Ferraro, 2002; Fletcher-Janzen, Strickland,
& Reynolds, 2000; Hambleton, Merenda, & Spielberger,
2005; Hambleton & Patsula, 1999; Nell, 2000; Pontón &
León-Carrion, 2001). Test developers and publishers are
encouraged to identify in test manuals and advertising
whether their test adaptations and translations conform to
the International Test Commission’s (2002) Test Adaptation
Guidelines.
We had two objectives in conducting this pilot study.
First, we wanted to test the sensitivity of the Seville com-
puterized neuropsychological battery (SNB) to detect atten-
tion deficits in children with ADHD as compared with
controls. Previous research has tested the SNB among brain
injury patients (León-Carrion, 1998, 1996) and children
with neurodevelopmental disorders such as spina bifida
(De la Torre, 2003); its attention tasks are verified to have
good sensitivity. The SNB is a computerized neuropsycho-
logical battery for which normative data have been col-
lected in the Spanish-speaking population, and the test is
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administered in Spain. The SNB computerized system
serves as an interface for the completion of various neuro-
psychological tests, such as the attention cancellation and
conditioned cancellation tests, Stroop test, Tower of Hanoi
test, and Luria Memory Scale. For this study, we used all of
those tests except the Luria Memory Scale.
Overall, the first goal was to evaluate a new, easy-to-
administer, brief, sensitive, comprehensive, computerized
tool for the assessment of attention in children with ADHD.
The secondary goal was to check whether participants
would show different performance on a task requiring
responses only when the target is on-screen than displayed
in continuous response–attention tasks on the traditional
CPT. Although our main objective was to test the sensitivity
of the cancellation tests contained in the SNB, we also
administered the Stroop and Tower of Hanoi tests for com-
parison. We hypothesized that this tool would be suffi-
ciently sensitive to detect ADHD attention deficits, as it was
previously proven able to detect symptoms of attention
deficits in brain injury patients. We also consider the atten-
tion tasks included in the SNB as constituting a better
approach than more traditional CPT tasks. The cancellation
attention test (León-Carrión, 1998) consists of a classic let-
ter cancellation task in which the participant has to press a
button whenever it appears on the screen during presenta-
tion of the target stimulus, which in this case was the letter
O. This test has similarities with the CPT (Conners, 1995),
although in the latter, the goal is to inhibit unwanted
responses and sustain the delivery or rate of objective
responses to those stimuli. The CPT assesses the mecha-
nisms of sustained attention over time and the dependence
of the ability to inhibit impulsive responses or errors on
preparation time between target stimuli. In the SNB test,
participants need to focus on the targets and press the key
only when they appear on the screen. Each attention subtest
of the SNB is 5 min long by default, but the program per-
mits the possibility of manipulating every experimental
parameter, including total task time, the duration of expo-
sure, and the intertask interval.
Second, we wanted to investigate the differences in RTs
between ADHD children and controls. As SNB attention
tests differ from the common CPT task, we allowed par-
ticipants more time between targets to prepare to respond
to add a prospective quality to the task; therefore, we
expected to see differences in RT not only between the two
groups but also between the two attention tests (simple
and conditioned). Electrophysiological data indicate that
difficulties with inhibitory control in ADHD are accompa-
nied by altered processes of response preparation and exe-
cution in children (Banaschewski et al., 2004; Brandeis
et al., 1998; Kuntsi, Wood, Van der Meere, & Asherson,
2009; Pliszka, Liotti, & Woldorff, 2000); this may indicate
a more general state- or response-regulation problem
(Banaschewski et al., 2004).
G. De la Torre et al. 3
The primacy of the inhibition deficit in ADHD has been
further studied using event rates and incentive manipula-
tions. In two studies, an apparent response-inhibition deficit
in ADHD “disappeared” after the introduction of incentives
(Konrad, Gauggel, Manz, & Scholl, 2000; Slusarek, Velling,
Bunk, & Eggers, 2001). However, those results have not
been consistently replicated, and in general, study results
appear highly sensitive to task parameters (Luman,
Oosterlaan, & Sergeant, 2005). Using manipulations of
event rates, some studies report no inhibition deficit in
ADHD under any event rate, whereas other studies find dif-
ferences between ADHD sufferers and controls only in slow
or fast conditions (van der Meere, 2002; Wiersema, Roeyers,
Van, & Baeyerns, 2006). The effects of such manipulations
on performance, when measured by the stop and go-/no-go
tasks, also vary across studies, emphasizing the sensitivity
of ADHD performance to task parameters and the differen-
tial sensitivity of different aspects of task performance to
the same task manipulations (Kuntsi et al., 2009).
Method
Participants
Sixty Spanish participants aged between 9 and 14 years
were included in this study, 30 of whom were healthy con-
trols and 30 of whom had been diagnosed with ADHD
(ADHD group: 15 male and 15 female individuals, mean
age = 12.75 years, SD = 1.98; control group = 13 male and
17 female individuals, mean age = 12.85 years, SD = 1.75).
Homogeneity was tested via the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test
(p ≤ .05).
The healthy controls had no history of either neurologi-
cal or psychiatric disorders. In the ADHD group, all partici-
pants had been diagnosed by school psychologists or
clinical neuropsychologists on the basis of neuropsycho-
logical and behavioral assessments. All children in this
group had diagnoses of ADHD–combined type according to
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric
Association, 2000) diagnostic criteria. To avoid circularity,
the specialists who determined the diagnoses of patients
included in the analysis were blind to the patients’ perfor-
mance on the SNB.
Materials
Both groups were evaluated with a series of neuropsycho-
logical subtests included in the SNB; all had been standard-
ized and normalized among the Spanish-speaking population.
SNB Subtests
Cancellation test and conditioned cancellation test of SNB.
In the cancellation test, participants have to press the key
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only when the target stimuli appear on the screen. The target
is set as the letter “O.” The conditioned cancellation test
(León-Carrión, 1998) is very similar, but the participant is
instead asked to press the key upon seeing the letter “O”
only if it has been preceded by the letter “X,” thus adding a
complication to the original experiment. Both tests were 5
min long in this study. In both tests, the duration of stimulus
exposure and the interstimulus interval were 1 s. Both tests
provided information on a series of variables, such as RT,
omissions, errors, and correct responses, in an explanatory
set of screens at the end of the test. A total of 50 target stim-
uli appeared on the screen during each test.
Tower of Hanoi/Seville test of SNB. This test, which is
included in the SNB, measures problem-solving skills,
learning, and reasoning. Specifically, the Tower of Hanoi/
Seville test (León-Carrión, 1998) is specially designed for
the assessment of executive function. In this test, partici-
pants are presented with three numbered bars and three col-
ored disks of different sizes. The goal is to build the tower
or pyramid that appears on the leftmost bar, except that it
needs to be moved to the rightmost bar. The number of
pieces varies according to the needs of the test type, ranging
from one to five discs. To move the discs, the participant
can press one of three numbered keys on the computer key-
board. The participant has to keep pressing the buttons
alternately according to the rules provided prior to the start
of the test. There are two different administration forms for
this test: A and B. In Form A, participants are not informed
of the rule stating the impossibility of placing a larger disk
on top of a smaller one. In Form B, participants are informed
of all the rules, including those regarding movements that
are disallowed by the program. The computer makes a noise
if participants try to perform one of these illegal move-
ments, and participants are instructed at the outset that a
sound made by the computer signifies that they have
attempted an illegal move. This option is helpful for seeing
whether participants are able to determine the logic of disal-
lowed movements for themselves. This provides especially
interesting options for the detection of disexecutive symp-
tomatology, inflexibility, and reiterative behavior. At the
end of the test run, the system offers complete information
on task performance, including the average response time,
total number of movements, total number of incorrect
movements, total number of correct movements, total time
taken to complete the task, and so on. In addition, the sys-
tem displays the commission numbers of three types of
errors: Type I error, when the participant tries to move a
disk from an empty bar; Type II error, when the participant
tries to move a disk from one bar to the same one; and Type
III error, when the participant tries to place a larger disk on
top of a smaller one (Figure 1).
Stroop test of SNB. The Stroop test (León-Carrión,
1998) of neurocognitive interference (Stroop, 1935) mea-
sures the error or delay in naming the displayed color of a
4 Journal of Attention Disorders XX(X)
Figure 1. Tower of Hanoi (SNB)
word whose meaning denotes a different color than the
color in which it is displayed on the screen. This occurs
due to mutual interference between different dimensions
or stimulus characteristics, which make it difficult to
ignore the informational conflict while performing the
task, even though the conflicting information is irrelevant
to the task. The SNB includes a version of this task in
which the participant must recognize and verbally respond
to the target stimuli; the evaluator then presses one of
three keys on the keyboard according to the verbaliza-
tions of the participant.
Method
The participating children came from private and public
schools in Spain. All of the children in the ADHD group
had completed the first phase of screening for identification
and diagnosis of ADHD, which was conducted by inter-
viewing their parents and teachers and administering the
ADHD Albor-COHS questionnaire (Garcia & Magaz,
2000). In some cases, a previous comprehensive psycho-
logical or educational evaluation confirming the presence
of ADHD already existed. Later, neuropsychological con-
sultations in private medical centers preceded neuropsy-
chological assessments conducted by administering the
same tests as were used with the control group (listed
above). In some cases, the evaluation was carried out across
two to three sessions separated by 1 week.
The children in the control group had no academic or
medical problems; their performance and development
were adequate considering their ages and academic levels.
All of them participated in the study voluntarily, and their
parents provided informed consent. Each test and its atten-
tional component were paired according to the results of
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previous work (De la Torre, 2002, 2003) on an adaptation of
an assessment of attention proposed by Mirsky Pascualvaca,
Duncan, and French (1999).
We performed a descriptive data contrast for two inde-
pendent samples between the two groups (ADHD patients
and controls). As dependent variables, we used quantita-
tive variables corresponding to different indices measured
by the neuropsychological tests used (attention cancella-
tion test of SNB: correct responses, erroneous responses,
and RT; conditioned cancellation test of SNB: correct
responses, erroneous responses, and RT; Tower of Hanoi/
Seville test of SNB: total time, average time, total moves,
correct moves, and incorrect moves; Stroop test of SNB:
subtest results for word-reading and color-naming tests).
All hypotheses were tested using alphas of p ≤ .05. The
analysis was carried out using the SPSS statistical package
for Windows. Before any further analysis, it was verified
that all quantitative variables met the criteria for normal
distribution established by the Kolmogorov–Smirnov and
Anderson–Darling tests.
Results
As shown in Table 1, participants in the ADHD group per-
formed worse on the cancellation and conditioned cancella-
tion tests of SNB than controls except in terms of the RT
index of the latter (t = −1.400, p = .195). Participants with
ADHD had poorer results than controls in terms of all indi-
ces of the cancellation tests of the SNB, with fewer correct
answers (t = 2.535, p = .014), more errors (t = −2.883, p =
.017), and higher average RTs (t = −1.318, p = .007).
Control participants showed higher numbers of correct
answers on the SNB than ADHD sufferers (t = 3.398, p =
.015). The results of post hoc tests showed medium-to-high
effect sizes (Cohen’s d) for these t tests. Interestingly, chil-
dren with ADHD had improved RTs on the conditioned
cancellation test, which always followed the simple cancel-
lation test. Similar variations were shown by controls and
ADHD patients in terms of this index, making their RTs
much more similar in this second cancellation test.
In the Tower of Hanoi/Seville test, no differences were
found between participant groups in terms of any of its indi-
ces. We found no significant differences on the Stroop test
between the two groups in terms of correct answers during
word reading (t = 1.860, p = .069), but we did find differ-
ences in terms of correct answers made during color naming
(t = 2.913, p = .005). Children with ADHD made fewer cor-
rect responses than controls on this subtest.
In general, the ADHD group had poorer results than con-
trols on those indices corresponding to most of the four
main elements of attention in Mirsky et al.’s (1999) multidi-
mensional model. We can also discern worse performance
by the ADHD group on factors related to both inhibitory
mechanisms (such as working memory) and consolidation
G. De la Torre et al. 5

Table 1. Results for SNB Indices in ADHD and Controls Including Cohen’s d Values

Controls ADHD t test

  M SD M SD t p d
Attention cancellation test 48.00 2.56 45.70 5.66 2.535 .014* 0.523
corrects
Attention cancellation test errors 1.66 2.12 8.60 0.08 −2.883 .017* −1.678
Attention cancellation test 0.49 0.02 0.51 0.08 −1.318 .007* −0.342
reaction time
Condition attention test corrects 49.29 0.46 47.33 3.03 3.398 .015* 0.901
Condition attention test errors 0.30 0.48 2.63 3.52 −3.433 .018* −0.927
Condition attention test reaction 0.43 0.07 0.44 0.06 −1.400 .195 −0.153
time
Tower of Hanoi total time 194.88 111.83 194.76 167.43 −0.245 .808 <0.001
Tower of Hanoi mean time 8.88 3.87 8.80 5.22 −0.435 .666 0.017
Tower of Hanoi total correct 14.37 5.80 15.75 6.65 −0.189 .851 −0.221
movements
Tower of Hanoi total erroneous 9.12 4.79 9.10 5.89 −0.032 .975 0.003
movements
Stroop word reading 98.12 2.31 95.50 5.43 1.860 .069 0.778
Stroop color naming 100 0 95.50 5.02 2.913 .005* 1.267
*significant difference for a ≤ .05.

of the anterior and posterior attentional systems in the
model of attention proposed by Posner and Petersen (Posner
& Petersen, 1990; Posner & Dehaene, 1994).
Discussion and Conclusion
In this study, participants with ADHD committed more
errors and gave fewer correct responses on all neuropsy-
chological tests used except for the Tower of Hanoi/Seville
test of the SNB.
Regarding our first hypotheses and goal, we conclude that
the cancellation tests contained in the SNB, although differ-
ent from traditional CPT tests, showed sensitivity to the
attention deficits of children with ADHD. The attention tests
contained in the SNB permitted participants with ADHD to
prepare their responses and requested that they be sufficiently
alert to execute the motor task of pressing a key on a key-
board only when a specific target appears on a screen. This
method represents a good method of performing research on
RT, attention, and inhibitory processes. We believe that these
types of cancellation tests, in combination with other specific
neuropsychological tests and multivariate functional models
of attention, may represent an effective research approach to
the clinical and experimental neuropsychological assessment
of patients with attention problems (León-Carrión et al.,
1998). Attention tests contained in the computerized SNB
can greatly aid in the detection of attention deficits in Spanish-
speaking children with ADHD.
Especially sensitive were the cancellation tests of the
SNB, which revealed significant performance differences
between the two groups; participants in the ADHD group
had clearly worse performance on this test. The results of
the attention tests of the SNB are directly related with the
results of other tests traditionally used in neuropsychologi-
cal assessment of children with ADHD, for example, the
CPT (Losier, McGrath, & Klein, 1996; Willcutt et al.,
2005). This poor performance could be explained by the
attention deficits described by different elements of
Mirsky’s multidimensional attention model (Mirsky,
Anthony, Duncan, Ahem, & Kellam, 1991). In terms of
focus/execution element of Attention, Mirsky’s model
would explain sustained attentional problems in our ADHD
group, but no differences were found in our study between
ADHD and controls for the alternate/shift element.
Decrement in vigilance was shown to progress throughout
the test, as related work has previously shown (Stins et al.,
2005; Swaab-Barneveld et al., 2000; Wilding, 2005;).
We obtained some discrete evidence with regard to our
second hypothesis. As mentioned above, the CPT requires
that the participant continuously press a key on the computer
keyboard and inhibit that response when the target appears
on the screen. In our study, we used the SNB cancellation
test to introduce an important variable to this task:
Participants only need to press the key when the target
appears, giving them more time to prepare and execute their
responses. However, children with ADHD nevertheless
showed higher error rates and lower rates of correct responses
than controls. It is particularly interesting to note that in the
conditioned attention test, these effects were significant in
the same directions, but the RTs were lower in this test. This
performance profile indicates that errors and impulsivity are
independent of preparation and readiness to process target

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6 Journal of Attention Disorders XX(X)
stimuli in children with ADHD. Performance is dependent
on the nature of the task itself and is a function of time on the
millisecond scale. As previously mentioned in the
“Introduction” section, this may indicate more general state-
or response-regulation problems (Banaschewski et al., 2003;
2004). In our study, although children with ADHD obtained
similar RTs to controls, they continued to make more errors
and fewer correct answers compared with controls, espe-
cially in terms of RT on both cancellation tests. Despite the
two factors that helped children with ADHD to improve
their poorer performance, the differences continued to be
significant between the two groups. Current research on this
factor offers revealing results. A time-processing deficit has
been proposed as a neuropsychological candidate endophe-
notype for ADHD (Valko et al., 2010). We observed in our
study that RTs may vary with learning effects and condi-
tioned tasks; these improve performance in ADHD sufferers,
but not to normal levels. This suggests that children with
ADHD have deficits in prospective time-task processing
similar to those observed in cases of prospective memory
problems. It is well known that the rostral prefrontal cortex
supports a cognitive system that reflects either stimulus-
oriented (SO) or stimulus-independent (SI) attending. This
part of the brain has also been shown to play a crucial role in
the maintenance and realization of delayed intentions.
Previous research has shown the same types of deficits
observed in this study on time-dependent computer tasks
among children with ADHD (Zinke et al., 2010). The rostral
prefrontal cortex and its relationship with ADHD have also
been studied using neuroimaging techniques. These neuro-
imaging studies showed decreased activation in the left ros-
tral medial frontal cortex during the go-/no-go task and
decreased activation in the bilateral prefrontal, temporal,
and right parietal lobes during the switch task among chil-
dren with ADHD (Smith, Taylor, Brammer, Toone, & Rubia,
2006). Other studies have also investigated the roles of
abnormalities of the rostral prefrontal cortex in developmen-
tal disorders on a task-by-task basis (Gilbert, Bird, Brindley,
Frith, & Burgess, 2008; Schulz et al., 2004).
The SNB and, specifically, its simple and conditioned
cancellation tests were especially sensitive to the detection
of attentional problems in children with ADHD. The SNB
has been previously used and tested in Spain among brain
injury and spina bifida patients (De la Torre, 2003; León-
Carrión et al., 1998), and adaptations of it have been created
in Mexico and Brazil (Bittencourt-Chastinet, Morais,
Solovieva, & Quintanar-Rojas, 2012).
Although some studies have shown poor performance on
the Tower of Hanoi/Tower of London (Aman, Roberts, &
Pennington, 1998; Paule et al., 2000) and Stroop tests
(Paule et al., 2000; Seidman, Biederman, Faraone, Weber,
& Ouellette, 1997) in populations with ADHD, the results
of our study did not show those trends, except for one index
of the Stroop test. This pattern of results also differs from
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those obtained in a previous study of different subtypes of
ADHD (Nigg, Blaskey, Huag-Pollock, & Rappley, 2002); in
that study, patients with the same ADHD subtype constitut-
ing our sample (the combined subtype) obtained poorer
results on these two tests. Performance in the Tower test was
very similar across both groups in terms of the measured
indices (total time, mean completion time, total movements,
and erroneous movements). One possible explanation for
these results is the low sensitivity of this task in comparison
with the others included in the SNB. As we explained in the
“Method” section, this task is a modification of the Tower of
Hanoi task called Tower of Hanoi/Seville test, which has
been adapted for use on computers. Children with ADHD
had more difficulties understanding the mechanics and
instructions given on this test than controls; this represents a
limitation of our study, and further research needs to be con-
ducted on the sensitivity and specificity of this test.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The
publication of this work received financial support from Spanish
Government Science and Industry grant AYA201018573.
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Bios
Gabriel G. De la Torre is Associate Professor of Psychology at
the Department of Psychology of University of Cádiz in Spain. He
teaches Attention and Perception and Neuropsychology of Brain
Injury. He does research on ADHD, attention and Spina Bifida
cognitive aspects and human factors.
Juan M. Barroso is Full professor of Psychology at Department
of Experimental Psychology of University of Seville in Spain. He
Downloaded from jad.sagepub.com at CADIZ UNIV on January 10, 2013
has extensive research experience on brain injury and neuropsy-
chological aspects.
Jose León-Carrión is Full Professor of Psychology and Director
of the Human Neuropsychology Laboratory at the Department of
Experimental Psychology of University of Seville. He has been
Vice-president of the International Brain Injury Association
(IBIA) and member of numerous international committees on the
topic.
Jose M. Mestre is Full Professor of Psychology at the Department
of Psychology of the University of Cádiz in Spain. He is specialist
on Emotional Intelligence and belongs to several international
committees on this area.
Rocio Guil Bozal is Cathedra Professor of Psychology at
the Department of Psychology of the University of Cádiz in
Spain. She is the director of the emotional Intelligence
Laboratory and she specialized in Social Psychology and Social
Neuroscience.