Effortful processing deficits in children with reading and/or attention disorders

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Background:

• Educational difficulties in boys are often linked to underlying cognitive processing deficits.
• Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Reading Disability (RD) are common conditions affecting academic achievement.
• Understanding the specific cognitive profiles of these groups is crucial for targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the effortful processing abilities of boys with Reading Disability (RD) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) (with and without hyperactivity) to typically achieving controls.
• To identify specific cognitive tasks that differentiate these clinical groups from each other and from controls.
• To determine the contribution of cognitive variables to reading grade level.

Main Methods:

• Contrasted three clinical groups (nonhyperactive RD, ADD with hyperactivity (H/ADD), ADD without hyperactivity (ADD)) with a control group of adequate students.
• Administered tasks assessing effortful processing, including memory for acoustic and semantic associations, and memory for low-imagery versus high-imagery words.
• Utilized stepwise regression analysis to predict reading grade level based on age, IQ, and effortful task variables.

Main Results:

• The nonhyperactive RD group showed unique differences from controls and both ADD groups on a memory task involving acoustic and semantic associations.
• All three clinical groups (RD, ADD/H, ADD) exhibited deficits in memory for low-imagery words and in computational efficiency compared to controls.
• Effortful processing tasks explained an additional 28% of the variance in reading grade level, beyond age and IQ (R = .83).

Conclusions:

• Attentional disorders appear to impede the automatization of fundamental cognitive skills, such as number fact recall.
• Even RD children without hyperactivity exhibit cognitive deficiencies similar to ADD and H/ADD boys, suggesting a shared underlying attentional component.
• Cognitive processing deficits, particularly in effortful tasks, are significant predictors of academic outcomes in educationally troublesome boys.