Poor executive functioning has been shown to be of central importance in disruptive behavior disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and a large number of laboratory measures of executive functioning have been developed. There are, however, few available questionnaires tapping executive functioning and those that exist also include items focused directly on the symptom criteria for ADHD, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions regarding executive functioning per se. In the present study, a new rating instrument, the Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXI) was therefore introduced. This instrument was shown to have good test-retest reliability. Using factor analysis, two factors tapping working memory and inhibition emerged using parent ratings and these two factors were replicated using teacher ratings. Modest, yet mostly significant, relations to laboratory measures of working memory and inhibition were found. Ratings on the CHEXI were also found to be significantly related to ADHD symptoms as well as early academic achievement. Interestingly, ratings on the CHEXI and laboratory measures of working memory and inhibition were shown to explain independent variance in ADHD symptoms and academic achievement, which point to the importance of using a multi-assessment strategy when studying executive functioning.

This study emphasizes the need to isolate complex executive processes and break them down into components in order to properly understand the neuropsychological roots involved in ADHD and ODD.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness of Barkley's (1997a) model of inhibition and executive functioning in describing the deficits associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Besides group differences, the present study addressed the question of independent effects of inhibition and the other executive functions in discriminating between children with ADHD and controls and how well, in terms of sensitivity and specificity, these measures can classify the children into the correct group. The results showed that children with ADHD differed significantly from controls with regard to measures of inhibition as well as all other executive function measures, except repetition of hand movements. In logistic regression models, three different measures tapping inhibition, working memory and emotion regulation were shown to be significant independent predictors of group membership. The sensitivity for these three variables as a set was 76.2, the specificity was 90.5, with a total of 86% of the sample correctly classified. When excluding the parental rating of emotion regulation, the overall classification rate decreased some, but was still relatively high in comparison with previous studies within this area of research.

No abstract

No abstract