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

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.