Behavioral and evoked potential measures of distraction in 5-year-old children born preterm Kaija Mikkola a, ⁎, Nicole Wetzel b , Jaana Leipälä c , Silve Serenius-Sirve d , Erich Schröger b , Minna Huotilainen e,f , Vineta Fellman a,g a Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland b Institute of Psychology I, University of Leipzig, Germany c National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland d The Finnish Children's Welfare Association/ADHD Centre, Helsinki, Finland e Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland f Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Dept. of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland g Dept. of Pediatrics, Lund University, Sweden abstract article info Article history: Received 20 December 2009 Received in revised form 20 March 2010 Accepted 23 March 2010 Available online 30 March 2010 Keywords: Attention Prematurity Childhood P1 P3a Reorienting negativity Executive and attention dysfunctions are common in very preterm children. We studied their involuntary attention process by using behavioral measurements and auditory event-related potentials (AERP) with a distraction paradigm at age five years. The active task was to distinguish between two animal sounds. As an irrelevant feature the sounds were presented from frequent (standard) or infrequent (deviant, 11%) direction from two loudspeakers. Of the 28 preterm children, only 75% could accomplish the task, whereas all full-term children (n = 15) could. When distinguishing the animal sounds, the reaction times were longer to the sounds from the deviant than from the standard direction in both groups, indicating involuntary distraction. The hit rates for the sounds from standard and deviant directions were similar in both groups. AERP amplitudes in the P1 interval and in the P3a interval elicited by standard and deviant stimuli were smaller in the preterm than in the control children. Deviants elicited P3a (indicating attentional orienting) and reorienting negativity (indicating attentional reorienting after distraction) in both groups. Comparable involuntary attentional orienting, distraction, and reorienting suggest similar maturation processes in 5-year-old preterm and full-term children. However, smaller AERP amplitudes in P1 and P3a interval suggest altered processing of auditory stimuli in those born preterm. As one-fourth of the preterm children could not accomplish the paradigm, less demanding paradigms should be used in studying children with increased distractibility. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Prematurity is a major risk factor for postnatal brain damage causing adverse neurodevelopmental outcome (Woodward et al., 2006). Preterm children are at an increased risk for attention executive dysfunction; they have difficulties in planning, self- regulation, accuracy, inhibition, and motor persistence (Marlow et al., 2007). Apart from neuropsychological tests, few tools exist to assess attention. Active-task auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) can be applied for studying involuntary and voluntary attention and distractibility (Escera et al., 2000). In an AERP, the exogenous positive (P) and negative (N) deflections are determined by the physical characteristics of the pre- sented stimuli. Exogenous AERPs in children alter during the auditory tract maturation. AERPs of infants are characterized with a large broad positivity at 200–300 ms (P2) followed by a late negativity at 300– 600 ms (N2) (Kurtzberg et al., 1984). AERP waveforms change in infancy first at midline according to the maturation of the primary auditory cortex, and later at temporal electrodes according to the secondary auditory cortical areas (Kurtzberg et al., 1984). The endogenous components reflect the cognitive processing of the stimulus paradigm that is related to learning, memory, and discrim- ination ability (Näätänen, 1992). Such endogenous deflections are P3a, elicited by an automatic attention shift (Escera et al., 1998), mismatch negativity, MMN, defined as a change detection process (Näätänen, 1992), and late negative response, RON, i.e. a response when reorienting from task-irrelevant sounds to task-relevant ones (Berti and Schröger, 2001). In children, AERPs consist of P1 (at 85–120 ms), N2 (at 200– 240 ms), and N4 (at about 450 ms) when interstimulus interval less International Journal of Psychophysiology 77 (2010) 8–12 ⁎ Corresponding author. Jorvi Hospital, Helsinki University Central Hospital, P.O. Box 800, 00029 Helsinki, Finland. Tel.: +358 9 471 85467; fax: +358 9 471 85958. E-mail address: kaija.mikkola@hus.fi (K. Mikkola). 0167-8760/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.03.009 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Psychophysiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpsycho