Testing Measurement Invariance across Groups of Children with and without Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder: Applications for Word Recognition and Spelling Tasks

Abstract

Although studies have consistently demonstrated that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) perform significantly lower than controls on word recognition and spelling tests, such studies rely on the assumption that those groups are comparable in these measures. This study investigates comparability of word recognition and spelling tests based on diagnostic status for ADHD through measurement invariance methods. The participants (n = 1,935; 47% female; 11% ADHD) were children aged 6–15 with normal IQ (≥70). Measurement invariance was investigated through Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes models. Measurement invariance was attested in both methods, demonstrating the direct comparability of the groups. Children with ADHD were 0.51 SD lower in word recognition and 0.33 SD lower in spelling tests than controls. Results suggest that differences in performance on word recognition and spelling tests are related to true mean differences based on ADHD diagnostic status. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.

Visual Attention, Orthographic Word Recognition, and Executive Functioning in Children With ADHD, Dyslexia, or ADHD + Dyslexia

“…As for the comorbid group, we found that they also showed worse performance on the word recognition task than the TD group, which is consistent with the results from studies using participants with ADHD-C without considering reading level in the participants' selection, using a task similar to ours (Johnels et al, 2014), or a dictation task (Lúcio et al, 2017). Finally, we did not find significant differences in our orthographic word recognition task between the comorbid group and the group with only DD, nor between the comorbid group and the group with only ADHD-C, which do not support the idea that children with dyslexia and ADHD-C symptoms present deficits more severe than the children suffering from only dyslexia or only ADHD-C.…”

“…Furthermore, some studies have found significant differences between children with and without ADHD in reading and reading-related tasks. For example, in the study carried out by Lúcio et al (2017), a group of Brazilian children with ADHD made more mistakes on reading isolated letters and spelled single words worse from dictation, and in the study by Johnels, Kopp, and Gillberg (2014), almost two thirds of a sample of Swedish girls with ADHD had problems with spelling, word recognition, and short-term verbal memory. However, the reports on the methods of the two studies just mentioned do not allow to rule out that the ADHD groups included some individuals with DD besides ADHD, that is, a subgroup of ADHD + DD children.…”

The Correlation between Chinese Written Vocabulary Size and Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral Factors in Primary School Students

“…When learning Chinese characters, children require strong behavioral self-regulation and attention control [31]. The children with more serious hyperactivity/inattention are prone to be distracted by irrelevant stimuli, which may inevitably affect the quality of memory and lead to a delay in written vocabulary size [32]. In line with previous literature, Chinese written vocabulary size also has a strong negative relationship with peer relationship problems [15].…”

Evaluating a scale of excessive mind wandering among males and females with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder from a population sample

“…However, if the magnitude of any direct effects is very small, then it is likely to have a trivial impact on the model 38 . In the baseline model, associations between the covariate and items are fixed to 0 and then modification indices are consulted, with modification indices >4 of the covariate on an item presenting DIF 35 . If the covariate shows an association with the latent structure (i.e., the factor), this provides evidence of population heterogeneity.…”