Sluggish cognitive tempo and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inattention in the home and school contexts: Parent and teacher invariance and cross-setting validity.

Abstract

This study examined whether sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inattention (IN) symptoms demonstrated cross-setting invariance and unique associations with symptom and impairment dimensions across settings (i.e., home SCT and ADHD-IN uniquely predicting school symptom and impairment dimensions, and vice versa). Mothers, fathers, primary teachers, and secondary teachers rated SCT, ADHD-IN, ADHD-hyperactivity/impulsivity (HI), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), anxiety, depression, academic impairment, social impairment, and peer rejection dimensions for 585 Spanish 3rd-grade children (53% boys). Within-setting (i.e., mothers, fathers; primary, secondary teachers) and cross-settings (i.e., home, school) invariance was found for both SCT and ADHD-IN. From home to school, higher levels of home SCT predicted lower levels of school ADHD-HI and higher levels of school academic impairment after controlling for home ADHD-IN, whereas higher levels of home ADHD-IN predicted higher levels of school ADHD-HI, ODD, anxiety, depression, academic impairment, and peer rejection after controlling for home SCT. From school to home, higher levels of school SCT predicted lower levels of home ADHD-HI and ODD and higher levels of home anxiety, depression, academic impairment, and social impairment after controlling for school ADHD-IN, whereas higher levels of school ADHD-IN predicted higher levels of home ADHD-HI, ODD, and academic impairment after controlling for school SCT. Although SCT at home and school was able to uniquely predict symptom and impairment dimensions in the other setting, SCT at school was a better predictor than ADHD-IN at school of psychopathology and impairment at home. Findings provide additional support for SCT's validity relative to ADHD-IN. (PsycINFO Database Record

Invariance of ADHD Symptoms Across Sex and Age: a Latent Analysis of ADHD and Impairment Ratings from Early Childhood into Adolescence

“…Further, the overall pattern of results when teacher ratings of functional impairment at the end of second grade were predicted by parent ratings of IN and HI was very similar to the results based only on parent ratings. Consistent with cross-setting invariance findings for the ADHD symptom dimensions (Burns et al, 2014; 2016), these results collectively suggest that the overall pattern of results are likely to have been similar if teacher ratings were included.…”

How Consistent Is Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Across Occasions, Sources, and Settings? Evidence From Latent State–Trait Modeling

“…In addition, our findings suggest that is especially important that research on SCT obtain information within both the home and school settings. Although SCT symptoms are invariant across parent and teacher ratings (Burns et al, 2016), it is nonetheless possible that specific features of SCT are more clearly observed in certain contexts and, when observed, especially linked to impairment. For example, Burns et al (2016) found teacher-rated SCT was a clearer predictor of parent-rated impairment than vice versa.…”

“…In terms of test-retest correlations, SCT showed 1- to 12-month stability coefficients from .80 to .92 (Becker, Leopold, et al, 2016, Table 4; Khadka, Burns, & Becker, 2016), two-year stability coefficients of .60 for mothers’, .65 for fathers’, and .45 for teachers’ ratings (different teachers across occasions; Bernad, Servera, Becker, & Burns, 2016), and a ten-year stability coefficient of .43 for mothers’ ratings (Leopold et al, 2016). In terms of inter-rater correlations, correlations for raters within the same setting (mothers with fathers; teachers with teachers) ranged from .71 to .80 (Becker, Leopold, et al, 2016, Table 4; Burns, Becker, Servera, Bernad, & García, 2016) with average home-to-school inter-rater correlations being .54 (Becker, Leopold, et al, 2016, Table 4). The test-retest and inter-rater correlations for SCT are also similar to those for ADHD-IN (Willcutt et al, 2012).…”

Sluggish Cognitive Tempo is Associated With Poorer Study Skills, More Executive Functioning Deficits, and Greater Impairment in College Students

“…Future research should consider multi-method and multi-informant measurements of these domains (e.g., GPA, academic achievement scores, neuropsychological test performance) to more fully test their association with SCT. Such research has just begun to emerge in school-aged children (Bernad et al, 2016; Burns, Becker, Servera, Bernad, & García-Banda, 2016; Lee et al, 2015), adolescents (Smith et al, 2016), and college students specifically (Leopold, Bryan, Pennington, & Willcutt, 2015), and additional studies using a multi-trait, multi-method, and multi-informant approach are certainly needed. Likewise, although there is initial psychometric support for the BAARS-IV SCT scale (Barkley, 2011a, 2012; Becker, Langberg, et al, 2014), it will be important for future studies to assess SCT with measures (including both rating scale and clinical interview measures) that include the SCT items identified in a recent meta-analysis as optimal for differentiating SCT from ADHD inattention (Becker, Leopold et al,2016).…”