Time windows matter in ADHD-related developing neuropsychological basic deficits: A comprehensive review and meta-regression analysis.

Normative development of neuropsychological functions that are assumed to underlie attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may show transition periods, i.e., periods of heightened developmental discontinuity and reduced differential continuity. During such periods differences between ADHD cases and controls in these functions might be obscured because assessments probably not only reflect individual differences in the ADHD-related deviation but also individual differences in speed/onset of the transition. Our review focuses on executive inhibitory control (IC) and delay aversion/discounting (DA) because normative developmental processes of these characteristics are relatively well described. For complex IC performance a transition period can be assumed in preschool years, for DA around puberty. Published meta-analyses on neuropsychological IC tasks and a meta-regression analysis of 23 case-control comparisons in DA tasks comprising 1395 individuals with ADHD and 1195 controls confirmed our assumption. Effect sizes of case-control comparisons were significantly larger outside transition periods, i.e., in age-periods of relative developmental continuity. An increasingly precise identification of such time windows could contribute to the understanding of the etiological pathways of ADHD.