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Assessing Dyslexia at Six Year of Age
Published on: May 1, 2020
Information processing deficits in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, inattentive type, and
Michael David Weiler1, Jane Holmes Bernstein, David Bellinger
1Department of Psychiatry, Learning Disabilities Research Center, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Weiler_m@tch.harvard.edu
Abstract:
We examined the information processing capabilities of children diagnosed with the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who had been characterized as having a sluggish cognitive tempo. Children referred for school-related problems (n = 81) and nonreferred community controls (n = 149) participated. Of the referred children, 24 met criteria for ADHD, 42 met criteria for reading disability (RD), and 9 of these were comorbid for RD and ADHD. Children with ADHD differed from those without ADHD on a visual search task but not on an auditory processing task; the reverse was true for children with RD. Decomposition of the visual search task into component operations demonstrated that children in the ADHD group had a slow processing rate that was not attributable to inattention. The children with ADHD were not globally poor at information processing or inattentive, but they demonstrated diminished speed of visual processing.
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