Les capacités mnésiques de l’enfant présentant un trouble déficit de l’attention : état des lieux

Abstract

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by a strong heterogeneity of the cognitive and behavioral profiles of affected children. They can be diverse and have various repercussions in the child's daily life. An alteration of the working memory capacities is very often found. This impairment affects the central executive in a privileged way and could be consecutive to the symptoms of the disorder or constitutive of the disorder. The study of episodic memory performance gives less consensual results. Although secondary weakness can sometimes be observed, episodic impairment does not seem to be systematic. However, some authors believe that episodic impairment may be constitutive of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The memory evaluation of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder remains interesting from a functional point of view to propose personalized learning techniques. It is also important to look into the quality of memory of these children. Attentional and executive impairments could both falsify memory accuracy, while reinforcing the memory trace due to the processing of many contextual elements during encoding.