Composition Skills of Children with ADHD: An Intervention Study to Improve Communicative Clarity

The aim of the current study was to assess whether providing visual feedback on the written compositions of children with ADHD was an effective method to improve communicative clarity. Participants were twenty children, aged 7 to 9 years with ADHD. Children composed instructions on how to build a figure so that a confederate could reproduce the image based only on the child’s instructions. Participants in the experimental group received feedback on their compositions in the form of the reconstructed figure and were able to then compare the figures side by side on-screen and edit their instructions. Participants who received visual feedback outperformed participants in the no feedback group on the clarity of compositions at post-test, and at a six-week delayed post-test, and were able to apply their learning to transfer tasks. This research makes valuable contributions to understanding the factors that contribute to successful early writing for children with ADHD.MAS