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Objective: We examined whether children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) differ from children without ADHD in attention, executive functions, and motor skills and whether measures of parents’ perceptions and children’s performance reveal comparable results. Method: About 52 children with ADHD and 52 children without ADHD aged 6 to 13 years completed performance-based measures of attention, executive functions, and motor skills. Parents completed questionnaires to rate their children’s skills. Results: Parent questionnaires but not performance-based measures revealed higher inattention and lower executive function skills in children with ADHD compared to controls. For motor skills, both measurement methods revealed lower mean values and a higher number of children showing an impairment in the ADHD group. Parent-reported difficulties but not performance-based measures were related to the presence of an ADHD diagnosis. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that considering both parent questionnaires and performance-based measures will lead to a comprehensive picture of a child’s strengths and difficulties.

Zusammenfassung. Die Studie untersucht Mittelwertdifferenzen bei Monolingualen und Bilingualen in der allgemeinen Intelligenz sowie 7 Faktoren mit je 2 Untertests mit den Intelligence and Development Scales-2 (IDS-2; Grob & Hagmann-von Arx, 2018 ). Die Stichprobe besteht aus je 132 gepaarten monolingualen, simultan bilingualen und sukzessiv bilingualen Kindern und Jugendlichen der Normierungs- und Validierungsstichprobe ( MAlter = 12.34, SDAlter = 4.44; 48 % Jungen). In einer einfaktoriellen Varianzanalyse wurde in der allgemeinen Intelligenz 5 – 7 %, im Langzeitgedächtnis 3 % und im Denken Verbal 11 % der Varianz durch die Gruppenzugehörigkeit erklärt: Die sukzessiv Bilingualen erzielten in der allgemeinen Intelligenz, im verbalen Langzeitgedächtnis und im verbalen Denken niedrigere Werte als die Monolingualen und teilweise auch als die simultan Bilingualen, während die Unterschiede zwischen simultan Bilingualen und Monolingualen nicht bedeutsam waren. Die Befunde implizieren, dass ein möglicher sprachlicher Nachteil für Personen mit fremdsprachigem Hintergrund bei der Interpretation der Intelligenz-Testergebnisse in den IDS-2 berücksichtigt werden muss.

Research on comparability of general intelligence composites (GICs) is scarce and has focused exclusively on comparing GICs from different test batteries, revealing limited individual-level comparability. We add to these findings, investigating the group- and individual-level comparability of different GICs within test batteries (i.e., internal score comparability), thereby minimizing transient error and ruling out between-battery variance completely. We (a) determined the magnitude of intraindividual IQ differences, (b) investigated their impact on external validity, (c) explored possible predictors for these differences, and (d) examined ways to deal with incomparability. Results are based on the standardization samples of three intelligence test batteries, spanning from early childhood to late adulthood. Despite high group-level comparability, individual-level comparability was often unsatisfactory, especially toward the tails of the IQ distribution. This limited comparability has consequences for external validity, as GICs were differentially related to and often less predictive for school grades for individuals with high IQ differences. Of several predictors, only IQ level and age were systematically related to comparability. Consequently, findings challenge the use of overall internal consistencies for confidence intervals and suggest using confidence intervals based on test–retest reliabilities or age- and IQ-specific internal consistencies for clinical interpretation. Implications for test construction and application are discussed.

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