The relationship between quantitative electroencephalography results and face emotion recognition, mind reading from eyes, and empathy skills in children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Aim: Our study was to examine the relationship between Quantitative Electroencephalography (Q-EEG) results and facial emotion recognition, mind reading from eyes, and empathy skills of children with ADHD. Method: Our study included 35 children with ADHD and 26 healthy children. Semi-structured interviews and K-SADS-DSM-5-T were applied by clinician. Assessments Conners Parent Rating Scale-Short Form (CPRS-RS), Weiss Functional Impairment Rating Scale-Parent Form (WFIRS-P), Griffith Empathy Scale-Parent Form, Conners Teacher Rating Scale-Short Form (CTRS-RS), Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and Ekman Facial Emotion Recognition Test and Q-EEG data obtained simultaneously. Results: ADHD groups, CPRS-RS, CTRS-RS, WFIRS-P scores were found to be significantly higher than controls; Empathy and RMET values were significantly lower. A decrease in the Amplitude-Occipital-Sadness parameter and prolongation in the Latency-Central-Neutral, Latency-Frontal-Neutral and Latency-Parietal-Neutral subfactors were found to be statistically significant between groups. Significant positive correlation was observed between ADHD diagnosis CPRS-RS, WFIRS-P, CTRS-RS, Latency-Central-Neutral, Latency-Frontal-Neutral and Latency-Parietal-Neutral values, negative correlation was found between empathy, RMET and Amplitude-Occipital-Sadness values. Conclusion: Our study, mediation and path analysis models were used to evaluate the behavioral, cognitive and neurophysiological functions of ADHD. The mediation effect of the scales was examined with EEG data and it was seen that the mediation effect was limited due to the insufficient number of participants and the passive task applied EEG recording. Results show that ADHD has different neurophysiological reflections in cognitive processing. That repeating our study with large sample ADHD groups will be a pioneer for future studies.