Differential Concentration Test for Children (DKT-K). Development and validation of a computer-assisted method to record the longer-term concentration

Abstract

Problems in concentration are a common phenomenon in infants and can appear in different ways. Children with ADHD have difficulties with long-term concentration, whereas they show no noticeable problems in short-term tasks. Besides the temporal dimension, concentration also includes diverse facets of information perception and processing. In order to examine the diverse aspects of concentration in a differentiated manner, the Differential Concentration Test for Children (DKT-K) was developed. It contains six trials and four scales with different difficulty levels. An initial empirical verification of the DKT-K was conducted with a sample of n = 230 pre- and elementary school children. The results confirm that the DKT-K is a reliable and valid test to record concentration in a differentiated way. By conducting the test with a sample of n = 35 children diagnosed with ADHD, it could also be shown that the DKT-K gathers the central difficulties in concentration for this disorder. These children differ significantly from a control group, parallelized for age and sex.