Getting clued in: inferential processing and comprehension monitoring in boys with ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: The present study examines the ability of children with ADHD to make inferences and monitor ongoing understanding of texts, to shed light on their academic difficulties. METHOD: A total of 29 boys with ADHD and 41 comparison boys between the ages of 7 and 12 participated. Three tasks measure how boys create and evaluate inferences, particularly explanatory inferences, and how they monitor their understanding of story events and the connections among them. RESULTS: Boys with ADHD are less able than their comparison peers to make appropriate inferences, particularly explanatory inferences. They also have more trouble identifying text inconsistencies. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that difficulties in making inferences and monitoring ongoing comprehension among children with ADHD may contribute to story comprehension problems and in turn to academic difficulties experienced by these children. Interventions specifically focusing on understanding causal connections, creating inferences, and monitoring ongoing understanding of stories need to be investigated.

Cognitive engagement and story comprehension in typically developing children and children with ADHD from preschool through elementary school.

The present study examined children's cognitive engagement with television as a function of the continuity of central or incidental content and whether this varied with age and clinical status. In Experiment 1, 9- to 11-year-old children's response times on a secondary task were slower the later a probe occurred in a sequence of central events, and response times predicted recall. Experiment 2 extended these results to 6- to 8-year-old children. Experiment 3 revealed that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) failed to show the pattern consistently observed for comparison children. The results support the hypothesis that typically developing children build a representation during viewing that reflects the causal structure of the televised story but that this skill is deficient in 4- to 9-year-old children with ADHD.

Story comprehension and the impact of studying on recall in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

This study examined the impact of studying on story comprehension and recall among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants in the study were 36 children with ADHD and 43 nonreferred comparison children ages 7 to 11. The participants listened to 1 of 2 folktales and recalled the story both before and after studying a written version of the story for up to 10 min. The stories had been divided into individual events, and each event was coded for the number of causal connections it had to other story events. Each event was presented on a separate page of the study booklet so that time spent on each event could be recorded. All of the transcribed recalls were coded for which story events the participant correctly recalled. For both groups, recall increased as the number of causal connections increased, but the effect of the number of causal connections on recall was stronger for comparison children than for children with ADHD. The results revealed no group differences in studying behavior. However, when recall before studying was included as a predictor of recall after studying, studying was found to be more effective for higher IQ comparison children than for higher IQ children with ADHD, especially at the highest levels of causal connections. The results offer important leads for the development of academic interventions that are specific to the story-comprehension deficits of children with ADHD.