A small study of adults from the Netherlands found that depressive symptoms explained the loss of positive attention bias in patients with ADHD.
can be described as longer and more frequent attention allocation toward negative opposed to positive or neutral information.”, comorbid ADHD and depression, and neither condition. Gaze duration, number of revisits, and location and duration of first fixation were recorded for each patient.
As hypothesized, non-psychiatric controls revisited the happy faces more than they did the other expressions. Patients in both the depression and the comorbid group had significantly less recurring attendance to the happy facial expression when compared to the ADHD-only and control groups. After controlling for depression symptom severity, the groups did not differ.