The written expression abilities of adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often experience deficits in academic achievement. Written expression abilities in this population have not been extensively studied but existing prevalence estimates suggest that rates of comorbid writing underachievement may be substantially higher than rates of comorbid reading and mathematics underachievement. The current study examined written expression abilities in a school-based sample of 326 middle school age students with ADHD. The prevalence of written expression impairment, the associations between written expression and academic outcomes, and specific patterns of written expression were investigated. Students with ADHD in this sample experienced written expression impairment (17.2% – 22.4%) at a similar rate to reading impairment (17.0% – 24.3%) and at a slightly lower rate than mathematics impairment (24.7% – 36.3%). Students’ written expression abilities were significantly associated with school grades and parent ratings of academic functioning, above and beyond the influence of intelligence. Analyses of patterns suggest that students with ADHD exhibit greater deficits in written expression tasks requiring organization and attention to detail, especially in the context of a complex task.

Handwriting assessment to distinguish comorbid learning difficulties from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in Chinese adolescents: A case–control study

“…However, improved visual motor integration in adolescents with ADHD would only increase readability of Chinese handwriting. This suggests that Chinese and English are two fundamentally different languages such that the former heavily relies on orthographic and logographic structures (Wang & Geva, 2003) whereas the latter is highly related to sound–letter correspondences (Molitor, Langberg, & Evans, ). Such discrepancy may contribute to the difference in the influence from sensorimotor performance to English and Chinese handwriting.…”

Do Chinese Children With Math Difficulties Have a Deficit in Executive Functioning?

“…An explanation may relate to the nature of the Digit Span Backwards task. More specifically, some researchers have argued that although it is frequently used as a measure of working memory, it is relatively shallow in its processing demands (e.g., St Clair-Thompson, 2010 ; Georgiou and Das, 2016 ).…”

Metacognitive interventions in text production and working memory in students with ADHD

“…Writing seems to be the most impaired and the least studied skill in this group of children (Mayes & Calhoun, 2006;Dorneles et al, 2014). Moreover, a study showed that written expression skills affect academic performance in other areas much more than do the intensity of ADHD symptoms, comorbidity with oppositional defiant disorder, use of medication, reading ability, and intelligence (Molitor, Langberg, & Evans, 2016b).…”

“…The low quality of texts produced by ADHD students (Re et al, 2007;Re & Cornoldi, 2010;Kim et al, 2013;Miranda et al, 2011), the high prevalence of this disorder in childhood and adolescence (Polanczyk, Lima, Horta, Biederman, & Rohde, 2007), and the scarcity of publications on the topic underscore the clear need for further research on the development and implementation of interventions designed to facilitate the writing processes of students with this disorder (Miranda et al, 2013;Semrud-Clikeman, 2012;Molitor et al, 2016b). In this context, the question is: what interventions can contribute to improving the writing performance of students with ADHD?…”