Listening comprehension abilities in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and language impairment

grantor: University of TorontoAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Language Impairment (LI) are two common developmental disorders that have far-reaching effects on children's academic success and development of social skills. Although ADHD and LI frequently co-occur, relatively little is known about specific patterns of LI associated with ADHD. This study sought to examine language comprehension abilities at the discourse level in children with ADHD and LI, both alone and in combination. It was hypothesized that children with ADHD would have more difficulty than normal children in comprehending less explicit information (i.e., making inferences) and monitoring their own comprehension during challenging listening tasks involving passages in the expository genre, and that children with combined ADHD+LI would show poorer comprehension abilities than children with LI alone. Another objective was to examine verbal and spatial working memory abilities in children with ADHD and LI, and determine whether these skills are associated with listening comprehension. Standardized measures were used to classify participants into an ADHD (no LI) group, an ADHD+LI group, an LI group, and a Normal control group. Children completed two novel listening comprehension tasks designed to assess (1) comprehension of facts and inferences in expository passages, and (2) the ability to detect errors in sequence or in factual consistency. Results showed that the two LI groups had the most difficulty with listening comprehension, although contrary to expectations, performance of children with combined deficits (ADHD+LI) was not worse than that of children with LI alone on the two listening comprehension tasks. Children with ADHD (no LI) were poorer than normal children at generating inferences and monitoring comprehension of spoken expository passages, despite comparable ability to comprehend facts. Children with ADHD, ADHD+LI, and LI showed significantly poorer verbal and spatial working memory skills compared with normal children. Spatial memory span was also deficient in these children, however verbal memory span was impaired only in the two LI groups, not in the ADHD group. Regression analyses suggested that both verbal and spatial working memory predicted a significant amount of the variance in listening comprehension performance. Results are discussed with respect to theoretical, clinical, and educational implications.Ph.D