Michel Bader

Hyperactivity and Attention Problems in a Swiss Sample of School-Aged Children Effects of School Achievement, Child Gender, and Informants

Objective: The sensitivity and tolerance regarding ADHD symptoms obviously differ from one culture to another and according to the informants (parents, teachers, or children). This stimulates the comparison of data across informants and countries. Method: Parents and teachers of more than 1,000 school-aged Swiss children (5 to 17 years old) fill in Connerss questionnaires on ADHD. Children who are older than 10 years old also fill in a self-report questionnaire. Results are compared to data from a North American sample. Results: Swiss parents and teachers tend to report more ADHD symptoms than American parents and teachers as far as the oldest groups of children are concerned. Interactions are evidenced between school achievement, child gender, and informants. A relatively low rate of agreement between informants is found. Conclusion: These results strengthen the importance to take into account all informants in the pediatric and the child psychiatry clinic, as well as in the epidemiological studies.

Validation of the French Version of Conners' Parent Rating Scale Revised, Short Version: Factorial Structure and Reliability.

Objective: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the most frequent neurodevelopmental disorders. Its diagnosis requires reference questionnaires such as the Conners’ Parent Rating Scale (CPRS). Presently, in French-speaking countries, a few translations of the revised short CPRS have been put to use without previous formal validation. We sought here for the validation of a French version (Lausanne, Switzerland) of the revised short CPRS regarding construct validity, internal consistency, and item reliability in a sample of French schoolchildren. Method: The study involved 795 children and adolescents aged 9 to 19 years from a single school. The factorial structure and item reliability were assessed with a confirmatory factor analysis for ordered categorical variables. The dimension internal consistency was assessed with Guttman’s lambda 6 coefficient. Results: The results confirmed the original and strong 3-dimensional factorial structure (Oppositional, Cognitive Problems/Inattention, and Hyperactivity), showed satisfactory item reliability, and indicated a good dimension internal consistency (Guttman’s lambda 6 coefficient: 0.87, 0.90, and 0.82, respectively, to the 3 dimensions). Conclusions: Thus, the Lausanne French version of the revised short CPRS may be considered validated regarding construct validity and item and dimension reliability; it can be now more confidently used in clinical practice.

Imperfect Decision Making and Risk Taking Are Affected by Personality

Classic game theory predicts that individuals should behave as rational agents in order to maximize their gain. In real life situations it is observed that human decision making does not follow this theory. Specific patterns of activity in several brain circuits identified in recent years have been associated with irrational and imperfect decision making. Brain activity modulated by dopamine and serotonin is assumed to be among the main drivers of the expression of personality traits and patients affected by Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are characterized by altered activity in those neuromodulating circuits. We investigated the effect of fairness and personality traits on neuronal and psychological mechanisms of decision making and risk taking in two sets of experiments based on the Ultimatum Game (UG) and the Investment Game (IG). In the UG we found that Fairness and Conscientiousness were associated with responder’s gain and with event-related potentials (ERP) components Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and Late Positive component (LPP). In the IG the sum gained during the risky gambling task were presented immediately after half of the trials (condition “high frequency feedback”, HFFB), while the other half were presented at the end of each block (condition “low frequency feedback”, LFFB). Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Sincerity influenced latencies of the negative deflection occurring at around 200 ms (N200) and the positive wave peaking at around 250 ms (P250) components. The contingent negative variation (CNV) component was affected in a different way in controls and participants with ADHD as a function of the feedback frequency (HFFB versus LFFB). These results clearly show that imperfect decision making and risk taking are affected by personality traits and cannot be accounted by models based on rational computations.

Cross-Informant Ratings of Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescent–Parent Pairs in Six Countries. Does Being Adopted Make a Difference?

Low agreement between self-reports and parent reports of the behavioral adjustment of adolescents has been widely documented in the literature. However, it has been little studied in connection with adoptees. In the current research, the magnitude of agreement between reports of adolescents’ behavioral problems given by the adolescents themselves and their parents and the direction of the possible discrepancies between these reports were studied. A comparison was made between adopted and nonadopted adolescent–parent dyads. The research questions were tested on a sample of 294 adolescent–parent pairs (189 adoptees and 105 controls) from Belgium, Romania, Chile, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands. Correlation analyses together with Fisher R to Z comparisons between countries and between adopted and nonadopted dyads and Repeated Measures Analyses revealed that both the magnitude of agreement and the direction of the discrepancies in internalizing and externalizing behavioral ratings between informants, that is, parents and their adolescent, did not depend on whether the adolescents were adopted or not. Compared with their parents, both adopted and control adolescents reported problems more frequently. Some variations in the magnitude of agreement were found between countries. An interaction effect between gender and informant indicated that discrepancies for internalizing behavior were higher in parent–adolescent daughter pairs than in parent–adolescent son pairs.

Validation of the French Version of Conners’ Parent Rating Scale–Revised, Short Version (CPRS-R:S): Scale Measurement Invariance by Sex and Age

Objective: ADHD is one of the most frequent neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition to clinical assessment, its diagnosis requires the use of validated and reliable behavior questionnaires such as the Conners’ Parent Rating Scale–Revised: Short Form (CPRS-R:S). Though various French versions of the CPRS-R:S have been already put to use in clinical practice and research, only a few have undergone a stringent validation process. After a previous validation of the factorial structure of Lausanne French version, we sought here for the analysis of its invariance across sex and age. Method: This validation step was carried out in a rather homogeneous French population of 365 boys and 374 girls from a single school. Two-age classes were considered: children (boys and girls) aged 9 to 11 years (n = 258) and adolescents aged 12 to 15 years (n = 481). Results: Regarding age, dimension Oppositional showed a strong invariance whereas dimensions Hyperactivity and Cognitive problems/Inattention showed a partially strong invariance. Regarding sex, dimensions Oppositional and Hyperactivity showed a partially strong invariance whereas dimension Cognitive problems/Inattention showed a partially weak invariance. The distribution of the CPRS-R:S scores is given by sex and age class. Conclusion: The Lausanne French version of the CPRS-R:S, already validated regarding its factorial structure, internal consistency, and reliability, is here validated regarding its invariance across sex and age. Caution should be taken in using dimension Cognitive problems/Inattention in comparisons between boys and girls.

An ERP Study Reveals How Training with Dual N-Back Task Affects Risky Decision Making in a Gambling Task in ADHD Patients

Impaired decision making and working memory (WM) are among the characteristic symptoms of patients affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In order to investigate whether a WM training can affect the attitude toward risky decision making, we designed a study where participants had to perform a probabilistic gambling task. Our study has demonstrated that WM training affects in a different way controls and ADHD patients, who showed an increased tendency toward a risk-taking attitude in case of the adaptive variant of the memory task. In ADHD patients, the frontal sites appeared the most affected, whereas global brain activity was likely to be affected in controls. This study shows also the benefits of cognitive training in ADHD patients and healthy subjects.