Attention Skills in Syntactic Processing in Children With ADHD & Their Typically Developing Peers

43 Pages·2014·1.77 MB·English

Attention Skills and Syntactic
Processing in Children with ADHD
& Their Typically Developing Peers
Milijana Buac & Margarita Kaushanskaya
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
November 16, 2013
Disclosure Statement
• Milijana Buac does not have financial or
nonfinancial relationships relevant to the content of
the presentation.
• Margarita Kaushanskaya does not have financial or
nonfinancial relationships relevant to the content of
the presentation.
ADHD Prevalence
• Approximately 3 to 7% of school-age children have
ADHD
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
• From 2000 to 2010, school-based SLPs served on average
EIGHT students with ADHD in their monthly caseload
(ASHA Schools Survey report: Caseload characteristics trends, 1995–2010)
What is ADHD?
Inattentive Impulsive-Hyperactive Combined
Impact of ADHD
• Executive Functions Deficits
• Difficulties inhibiting (e.g., Geurts, 2004)
• Working memory difficulties (e.g., Martinussen et al., 2005)

• High comorbidity between language impairment and ADHD
has been documented
(Redmond, 2005; Cohen, Vallance, Barwick, Im,
, suggesting a possible
Menna, Horodezky, & Isaacson, 2000)
relationship between attention and language.
Research Questions
• Whether and to what degree ADHD impacts executive
function mechanisms in school-age children.
• Whether and to what degree ADHD impacts language
performance.
• Is the impact of ADHD on language performance driven by
poor attention or by poor language?

Screening Tool
• ADHD screener
• Conners 3 (Conners, 2009)
Participants
Measure ADHD High Conners TD
n 7 6 7
Age 8.43 (.91) 8.35 (.74) 8.43 (.87)
Gender 5 boys 3 boys 5 boys
SES1 6.0 (1.16) 6.17 (1.47) 6.00 (1.00)
Nonverbal IQ2 98.29 (18.01) 105.57 (18.45) 96.86 (18.48)
1. SES measured using a Likert Scale 1-8; 1-some high school; 8-professional degree
2. Nonverbal IQ measured using the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test, Matrices Subtest