Language Abilities of Children With ADHD

BACKGROUND: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD) is associated with language difficulties within expressive, receptive and pragmatic areas of language.Telling stories is a particularly interesting language task as is provides the possibility of investigating how children use their language in everyday interactions. Thus, investigating how children with ADHD tell stories provides a more naturalistic impression of their language abilities. However, the extent, causes, and clinical relevance of language and narrative difficulties in ADHD remain largely unknown. Language may be the key to understanding and improving the functional impairments associated with ADHD such as social and academic function. AIM: The overall aim of the current study was to investigate the association between language, narrative ability and ADHD, what contributes to this association, as well as the clinical relevance of language difficulties in ADHD in relation to academic and social function. METHOD: Children between 7-11 years old with ADHD will be recruited from Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby and compared to children without ADHD recruited from schools in the community. All children will be assessed at two separate meetings at the Department of Psychology, Aarhus University. The total number of participants in each group will depend on the intake of patients at Aarhus University Hospital, but a maximum of 100 children will be sampled in each group.