The Stories They Tell: Story Production Difficulties of Children With ADHD

The profile of pragmatic language impairments in children with ADHD: A systematic review

“…Findings regarding the frequency with which children with ADHD include goal-based units have been mixed. When children with ADHD do provide goal-based units, these are less frequent and of lower quality (e.g., missing key details) than the goal-based units produced by TD children (Derefinko et al, 2009; Freer et al, 2011; Leonard et al, 2009; Renz et al, 2003). In contrast, Freer et al (2011) reported that, while there are a similar number of goal-based events in the stories of children with ADHD and TD children, those with ADHD produce more stories with no goal-based units than their TD peers.…”

“…When children with ADHD do provide goal-based units, these are less frequent and of lower quality (e.g., missing key details) than the goal-based units produced by TD children (Derefinko et al, 2009; Freer et al, 2011; Leonard et al, 2009; Renz et al, 2003). In contrast, Freer et al (2011) reported that, while there are a similar number of goal-based events in the stories of children with ADHD and TD children, those with ADHD produce more stories with no goal-based units than their TD peers. Results of a study by Derefinko et al (2009) indicate that, relative to the TD children, those with ADHD were less likely to include the story resolution in their narratives.…”

“…The lack of goal-based units is not the only identified area of weakness in the narratives of children with ADHD. For children with ADHD, stories containing at least one goal-based event were rated as less coherent than those of the TD children, marked by poorly maintained storylines, list-like structures, and fewer instances of transitions (Freer et al, 2011). Coherence also requires the speaker to be specific about to whom or what they are referring.…”

“…It is possible that expressive language skills account for differences in narrative coherence between ADHD and TD groups. The results of some studies indicate that group differences in narrative discourse disappear after controlling for expressive language levels (Freer et al, 2011; Lorch et al, 2010). Luo and Timler (2008) also found that it was only children with ADHD and a co-occurring language impairment (defined as a composite standard score of ≤85 on the CELF-4 and a history of receiving speech/language services), who included fewer goal-based units in their narratives than the TD children.…”

Crossing Boundaries in Literacy Research

“…Through their painstaking work, they had come to a lab-based understanding that second- and third-grade children at risk for ADHD struggled with some aspects of narrative comprehension that were distinct from children not at risk for ADHD. I learned that issues related to working memory, behavioral inhibition, and a lack of persistence made it difficult for children with attention problems to build coherent, goal-based story representations that drew upon relevant textual information and explicit and inferred causal structure to inform their story recall (e.g., Freer, Hayden, Lorch, & Milich, 2011; Lorch et al, 1999).…”