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Objective: Voluntary and automatic orienting of attention enable proper processing of environmental information. Few studies have assessed how this process varies during development in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: This study analyzed voluntary and automatic orienting in 30 children with ADHD and 30 age and sex matched controls (Control group-CG). Two experiments assessed voluntary and automatic orienting by recording reaction times (RT) to conditions in relation to temporal interval, spatial position, cue validity and age. The RT medians calculated for each condition and participant were analyzed using ANOVA to compare ADHD and CG. Results: Children with ADHD exhibited globally higher RT than the CG group. They also showed prejudices during the reorienting process and demonstrated adequate voluntary orienting for shorter intervals. In automatic task, there was no group interaction, expressing early facilitation, but not inhibition of return. Conclusion: These results identify correlations of ADHD and the children's age in relation to voluntary and automatic orienting of attention.

Sustained attention corresponds to the ability to maintain attentional focus on an activity for a longer period with the same consistency pattern. Knowledge about the development of mental abilities is essential for the understanding of how cognitive processes establishes throughout development and their relation to brain organization. This study aims to analyze the ability to sustain attentional focus in time in children of different age groups. The study included 78 children aged 6 to 11 years old (44 girls and 34 boys), enrolled from the 1st year to the 5th year of private school in São Paulo, Brazil. Each participant was instructed to fixate the gaze at the fixation point (FP), prepare to respond after it changed color to blue and respond as quickly as possible to the occurrence of the target (0.3-degree square superimposed to the central point) pressing the space bar, measuring the reaction time (RT). The target would come after one of 12 equal possible time intervals (100; 400; 700; 1000; 1300; 1600; 1900; 2200; 2500; 2800; 3100 and 3400 ms) in milliseconds. Multifactor ANOVA with repeated measures results demonstrated a significant effect (F (4, 73) = 13.001, p

Attention is a multidimensional construct with variations throughout devel-opment. In Brazil, there is a lack of instruments with adequate psychometric chara...

Selective attention directs cognitive resources to relevant objects or events through either voluntary (top-down) or automatic (bottom-up) control. This paper analyzes voluntary and automatic orienting of attention during childhood development. Seventy-four children (6 to 10 years old) were asked to press a key in response to a visual target presented in a previously oriented position (voluntary orienting; Experiment 1) or after a peripheral unpredictable cue (automatic orienting; Experiment 2). A systematic reduction of reaction times was observed in older children in both experiments. For automatic orienting in Experiment 2, reaction times were shorter in the ipsilateral condition than in the contralateral condition. However, for older children, the differences in reaction times between these conditions decreased. This may be attributable to the appearance of Inhibition of Return as a result of the maturation of the attentional system derived from childhood development, which contributes to more effective exploration of the environment.