Seeing is believing: Larger Colavita effect in school-aged children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neu-rodevelopmental disorder that leads to visually relevant compen-satory activities and cognitive strategies in children. Previous studies have identified difficulties with audiovisual integration in children with ADHD, but the characteristics of the visual domi-nance effect when processing multisensory stimuli are not clear in children with ADHD. The current study used the Colavita para-digm to explore the visual dominance effect in school-aged chil-dren with ADHD. The results found that, compared with typically developing children, children with ADHD had a higher proportion of "visual-auditory" trials and a lower proportion of "simultane-ous" trials. The study also found that the proportion of visual-au-ditory trials in children with ADHD decreased as their Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham-IV rating scale (SNAP-IV) inattention scores increased. The results showed that school-aged children with ADHD had a larger Colavita effect, which decreased with the sever-ity of inattentive symptoms. This may be due to an overreliance on visual information and an abnormal integration time window. The connection between multisensory cognitive processing performance and clinical symptoms found in the current study provides empirical and theoretical support for the knowledge base of multisensory and cognitive abilities in disorders. (c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.