This Section of Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences regularly appears in each issue of the Journal to describe relevant studies investigating the relationship between neurobiology and psychosocial psychiatry in major psychoses. The aim of these Editorials is to provide a better understanding of the neural basis of psychopathology and clinical features of these disorders, in order to raise new perspectives in every-day clinical practice. This article aims to review the studies exploring language abilities in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; with or without comorbid language impairment) focusing on oral speech discrimination, listening comprehension, verbal and spatial working memory as well as on discourse analysis and pragmatic aspects of communication and language comprehension. According to the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000), the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is characterized by persistent and severe levels of hyperactivity/impulsivity and/or symptoms of inattention, interfering with normal functioning in social, educational and working environments. Even if not included in the core diagnostic criteria of ADHD, language disturbances may often be present (Baker & Cantwell, 1992;Camarata & Gibson, 1999), affecting both linguistic and pragmatic domains. Indeed, hyperactive/impulsive symptoms may result in speaking without thinking or respecting the conversational turn in conversations, interrupting others' speech and talking excessively. These symptoms may reflect an association between ADHD and difficulties in pragmatic aspects of communication. Interestingly, such kinds of impairments (i.e. inappropriate and impulsive behaviours in conversations and relationships), which have been reported in ADHD (Oram et al. 1999;Kim & Kaiser, 2000) (Table 1), are somewhat similar to those described in pervasive developmental disorders (Bishop & Baird, 2001; (Table 1) and schizophrenia (Tavano et al. 2008;Bellani et al. 2009Bellani et al. , 2010.Inattentive symptoms appear to be linked also with language comprehension difficulties, since children do not apparently listen and do not follow teacher's instructions. In their study, Baker & Cantwell (1992) realized indeed that there is a strong association between language impairments (LI) and ADHD (Table 1). Achievement and cognition problems are related to both conditions, and so it is a challenge to define which deficits belong to ADHD, which ones to LI alone and which ones are shared by the two conditions, although the presence of LI is suggested to represent the crucial factor (Cohen et al. 2000).Other authors have mainly focused on working memory abilities in ADHD children, with or without language impairments, reporting different results Fax: +39,-045-8027498 (Email: marcella.bellani@univr.it; paolo. brambilla@uniud.it) Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences (2011), 20, 311-315.
