Language and reading in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder+developmental language disorder.

Abstract

The current study sought to examine whether psycholinguistic assessments could discriminate children and adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) from those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; combined or inattentive subtype) and comorbid DLD+ADHD. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Screening Test (CELFST; Wiig etal., 2013), the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (nonword repetition subtest; Wagner etal., 2013), and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (sight word and phonemic decoding subtests; Torgesen etal., 2012) were examined in 441 children and adolescents between 6 and 16years of age. The presence of a language disorder (with or without ADHD) predicted poor performance across tasks. Children and adolescents with ADHD (combined vs. inattentive) only significantly differed in sight word reading, in favor of those with combined type. Measures of reading efficiency could distinguish between the two types of ADHD, but not between other groups. Interestingly, scores on the standard language screener were no worse for children with ADHD+DLD than children with DLD only. The combination of comorbid ADHD+DLD did not appear to be associated with lower language abilities, sight word reading, or phonemic decoding relative to DLD alone. Reading efficiency was effective in discriminating between ADHD subtypes. These findings offer valuable insights into differential diagnosis and the identification of comorbidity.