Language Problems and ADHD Symptoms: How Specific Are the Links?

Abstract

Symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity frequently co-occur with language difficulties in both clinical and community samples. We explore the specificity and strength of these associations in a heterogeneous sample of 254 children aged 5 to 15 years identified by education and health professionals as having problems with attention, learning and/or memory. Parents/carers rated pragmatic and structural communication skills and behaviour, and children completed standardised assessments of reading, spelling, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. A single dimension of behavioural difficulties including both hyperactivity and inattention captured behaviour problems. This was strongly and negatively associated with pragmatic communication skills. There was less evidence for a relationship between behaviour and language structure: behaviour ratings were more weakly associated with the use of structural language in communication, and there were no links with direct measures of literacy. These behaviour problems and pragmatic communication difficulties co-occur in this sample, but impairments in the more formal use of language that impact on literacy and structural communication skills are tied less strongly to behavioural difficulties. One interpretation is that impairments in executive function give rise to both behavioural and social communication problems, and additional or alternative deficits in other cognitive abilities impact on the development of structural language skills.

Impaired Memory for Instructions in Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Is Improved by Action at Presentation and Recall

“…Finally, a third limitation is that we did not exclude children with comorbid disorders, such as dyslexia and language impairment. Language problems are often comorbid with ADHD (Willcutt and Pennington, 2000; Germano et al, 2010; Hawkins et al, 2016), with comorbidity rates of between 18 and 45% for dyslexia (Germano et al, 2010), and 40–45% for language impairment (Tirosh and Cohen, 1998; Helland et al, 2016). Children with comorbid language problems have difficulties in encoding, retaining, and retrieval verbal information (Archibald and Gathercole, 2006) and so may be more impaired in primarily verbal conditions (e.g., spoken presentation or verbal recall conditions).…”

Cerebellar Contributions to Language in Typical and Atypical Development: A Review

“…For example, smaller cerebellar volumes are reported in these individuals (Stoodley 2014), and these reductions are associated with symptom severity (Castellanos et al, 2002). ADHD is also associated with language difficulties, particular for pragmatic aspects of communication (Hawkins, Gathercole, Astle, The Calm Team, & Holmes, 2016). However, despite these associations, no study (to our knowledge) has directly assessed the relation between cerebellar dysfunction and language development in children with ADHD.…”

Transdiagnostic associations across communication, cognitive, and behavioural problems in a developmentally at-risk population: a network approach

“…Behavioural difficulties, poor communication skills, and everyday cognitive problems are common in children, and they often co-occur [1][2][3][4][5]. Each set of symptoms is commonly associated with a specific developmental disorder, and as a consequence is typically studied in groups of children in whom such problems are characteristic.…”