Overlapping and disease specific aspects of impulsivety in children and adolescents with schiozphrenia spectrum disorders or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Background and aim: Dimensions of impulsivity have been observed in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia patients. The purpose is to identify disease specific and overlapping aspects of impulsivity in children and adolescents with ADHD or early-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Materials and plan: Motor impulsivity (Stop Signal Task), reflection impulsivity (Information Sampling Task), and trait impulsivity (Barratt Impulsiveness Scale) are compared between three groups of childrens and adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age: patients with early-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders (N-29), patients with ADHD (N=29), and healthy controls (N=45).

Results: preliminary results: Compared to healthy controls, reflection impulsivity is significantly increased in patients with ADHD in a condition with a confluct between reward and certainty. Early-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorder patients appear to perform differently from the healthy controls and the schizphrenia spectrum disorder patients, although not signivicantly (p = .163).

Conclusion: Reduced information sampling in children and adolescents with ADHD may reflect an inability to delay their decision making to gather more information in a condition with a conflict between reward and certainty. The reduced information sampling may also reflect an increased risk-taking or conviction in the decision at a point of relative uncertainty. Children and adolescents with schizophrenia spectrum disorder patients show no significant deficits in reflection impulsivity.This latter results in in line with an earlier finding in first-episode psychotic patients (Huddy et al. 2013) and may not support the 'jumping to conclusion' reasoning bias hypothesis.