Central Executive Functioning and Electrodermal Levels in Adults with and without Clinically Significant Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Symptoms

Adults diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) demonstrate impaired performance on central executive (CE) functioning tasks (Alderson, Hudec, Patros, & Kasper, 2013a; Boonstra, Oosterlaan, Sergeant, & Buitelaar, 2005; Nigg et al., 2005) and underarousal of the sympathetic nervous system as measured by the electrodermal levels (EDLs) during resting state paradigms (Hermens et al., 2004). CE functioning and arousal are linked in three theoretical models of ADHD. No study to date has examined the degree to which EDLs (arousal) are related to ADHD-related cognitive impairments. This study examined (1) performance associated with central executive functioning and (2) EDLs while increasing CE processing demands and controlling for storage capacity in adults with and without clinically significant ADHD symptoms. All participants performed significantly better on the condition with lowest CE processing demands (e.g., the short-term memory condition) relative to the conditions with greater CE processing demands (e.g., working memory conditions; all ps ≤ .003).

While no significant between-group differences in EDLs were observed, the control group demonstrated a significant decrease in EDLs during tasks that required greater CE processing demands (e.g., working memory conditions) relative to tasks that required less CE processing demands (e.g., short-term memory conditions), whereas participants with clinically significant ADHD symptoms demonstrated little modulation of EDLs across all conditions (all ps >. 05).