Language Processing in Attention Defi cit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

Attention-Deficits/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most frequent psychiatric diagnosis in children with learning disorders. Individuals with ADHD usually present working memory difficulties. We raise the hypothesis that people with ADHD wouldn’t have the same performance in reading tasks, compared to a control group. Five psycholinguistic experiments using on-line methodology were applied. The aim was to distinguish between the processing of reading and metalinguistic processing, in order to identify the nature of the linguistic impairments in ADHD volunteers. Both groups obtained similar accuracy rates, but latencies were significantly higher for the ADHD group than for the controls, demonstrating that ADHD subjects are able to achieve the same results, but that they need more time than the control group. This result suggests that there is a language processing problem intrinsic to ADHD individuals.