Commentary response: Addressing the challenges - response to the commentary of Jarrold and Hall (2012)

Abstract

We thank the Editors for this opportunity to respond to the commentary by Jarrold and Hall (2012) on our article describing the impact of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) both individually and in combination on various aspects of memory functioning (Rhodes et al., 2012). This was the first study to provide a detailed investigation of memory functioning in ODD and is notable for having identified that ODD, even in the absence of ADHD or other psychopathology, is associated with significant and wide ranging disruption of both executive and nonexecutive aspects of short term working memory and in long term memory functioning. We were also able to replicate findings from our previous studies (Rhodes et al., 2005 Rhodes et al., 2004) and those of others (Martinussen et al., 2005) that ADHD is also associated with significant executive and non-executive deficits in short term memory and deficits in longer term recognition memory. An additional, and interesting finding was that whilst those with ADHD, when compared to healthy controls, were only impaired on spatial memory tasks, the ODD group demonstrated deficits in both verbal and spatial aspects of memory. Whilst the findings for ODD are new, those for ADHD again replicate those previously described by others (Willcutt et al., 2005). Interestingly these deficits appear to be additive in nature with the comorbid group (ADHD + ODD) representing a hybrid of the two disorders. As pointed out by Jarrold and Hall, we adopted a theoretically driven approach to our analyses. By using a confirmatory rather than exploratory approach to factor analysis we were able to derive theoretically relevant factors that could then be used to examine the differential functioning between the clinical groups and the healthy controls. For reasons