Reading disability with or without, attention deficit hyperactivity, disorder: Do attentional problems, make a difference?

Abstract

This study compared four groups—reading disabled, reading disabled/attention deficit hyperactivity disordered, attention deficit hyperactivity disordered, and clinical controls—of clinic‐referred children on measures of rapid naming and executive functions. The study was conducted to test the “phenocopy” hypothesis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the presence of reading disability presented by Pennington, Groisser, & Welsh (1993). According to the hypothesis, the comorbid group shows cognitive deficits similar to those found in the pure reading disabled children, and does not show deficits characteristic of children with ADHD. The executive function tasks failed to differentiate these clinical groups from each other, showing that children with ADHD are not particularly poor on measures of executive functions. The results indicated that the performance of the comorbid group on rapid naming were impaired to a degree similar to the purely reading disabled children. This gives reason to conclude that the problems in reading acquisition of children in the comorbid group are due to factors that are also found in the purely reading‐disabled group and are not explainable by attentional deficits.