Attentional and executive indexes of the Conners’ continuous performance test (CCPT) in a sample of adolescents with ADHD. Can the CCPT be claimed as a endophenotype of ADHD?

Introduction and objectives: This study investigated the performance of a clinical sample of adolescents with ADHD in CCPT. Methods: Twenty-eight subjects with ADHD (17 male) aged between 12 and 18 years. The results in each of the 15 measures of CCPT were compared between the ADHD and control group. Besides the analysis of each measure separately, a factor analysis proposed by Egeland and Kovalick-Gran [1] was performed. Results: The ADHD group showed deficit in 13 of the 15 measures evaluated by CCPT when compared to the control group. The five factors analysis shown that both subtypes of ADHD had poor performance in relation to vigilance (p = 0.001), focused attention (p = 0.001) and sustained attention (p = 0.001), when compared with control subjects. Discussion and conclusion: The analysis of 15 measures in the ADHD group supports that the CCPT is a possible candidate endophenotype test for the evaluation of attentional and executive deficits in ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]