Characteristics of the Orienting Response in Hyperactive and Normal Children

ABSTRACT Characteristics of the skin conductance orienting response (OR) to nonsignal and signal stimuli in 20 hyperactive and 20 normal children were compared. When 30 nonsignal tone stimuli of 6‐sec duration and 70 db intensity were presented, attributes of the OR to stimulus onset and its habituation were similar for both groups. However, when the task demands increased and Ss were required to make an active response to discrete stimuli in a delayed reaction time (RT) task, controls exhibited a significant increase in both tonic and phasic OR measures while hyperactives remained relatively unresponsive. Performance on the RT task was also clearly deficient in the hyperactive Ss; compared to controls, hyperactives exhibited slower RTs and a greater amount of variability in performance. It was suggested that for the hyperactives the warning signal given at the outset of each RT trial did not have the intended effect of alerting the S and preparing him to respond to the reaction signal.