performance of students with attention deficit disorder and ... - SciELO

PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER AND HYPERACTIVITY IN METALINGUISTIC AND READING TASKS Desempenho de escolares com transtorno de déficit de atenção e hiperatividade em tarefas metalinguisticas e de leitura Vera Lúcia Orlandi Cunha (1), Cláudia da Silva (2), Maria Dalva Lourencetti (3), Niura Aparecida de Moura Ribeiro Padula (4), Simone Aparecida Capellini (5)

ABSTRACT Purposes: to compare and characterize the performance of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in metalinguistic tasks and reading with students without behavioral disorders and/or learning disabilities. Method: twenty students from the 4th to 8th grade of elementary school took part, fourteen students were males and six females, aged between 9 and 13-year old. The students were divided in two groups, with GI composed by ten students with interdisciplinary diagnosis of ADHD and GII composed of ten students without behavioral disorders and/or learning disorder, paired with GI according to age and grade level. The used procedure was the application of a protocol with tasks of metalinguistic awareness and reading of real words and non-words. Results: there was statistically significant difference between groups in the tasks of syllabic and phonemic manipulation, as well as in tasks of reading real words related to the reading of regular words and irregular words, but also for non-words. Conclusion: the students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder showed lower performance in tasks considered to be more complex, such as manipulating syllables and phonemes and reading irregular words, requiring retention, analysis and information retrieval. The difficulties showed in these skills by students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder cannot be attributed to a primary deficit, but as a secondary phenomenon to inattention that interferes directly in their performance. KEYWORDS: Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity; Reading; Learning; Linguistics; Education

„„ INTRODUCTION Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is currently considered as a heterogeneous group (1)

Speech and Language Pathologist, Masters and Ph.D. student in Education from the Faculty of Sciences - FFC / UNESP, Marilia, SP, Brazil.

(2)

Speech and Language Pathologist, Masters and Ph.D. student in Education from the Faculty of Sciences - FFC / UNESP, Marilia, SP, Brazil.

(3)

Neuropsychologist of the Clinic of Deviations Learning of the HC/FM/UNESP, Botucatu, SP, Master in Public Health from the Universidade do Sagrado Coração - USC, Bauru, SP, Brazil.

(4)

Child Neurologist, Professor at the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry of the FM / UNESP - Botucatu - SP, PhD in Medical Sciences from the FCM / UNICAMP - Campinas, SP, Brazil.

of neurological abnormalities, which appear in childhood and manifested during children development, resulting from the interaction between certain genetic configurations and exposure to various environmental conditions. The current diagnostic classifications put this heterogeneity in a category seen as a group of developmental abnormalities in the frontal lobe and other brain related areas 1,2. ADHD can be understood, therefore, as a disorder dependent of family-genetic factors, biological and psychosocial adversity. It has multifactorial (5)

Speech and Language Pathologist, Professor, Department of Speech Pathology and Graduate Program in Education at the Faculty of Sciences - FFC / UNESP - Marília - SP, PhD in Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences FCM / UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil.

Conflict of interest: non-existent Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

Cunha VLO, Silva C, Lourencetti MD, Padula NAMR, Capellini SA

etiology and is characterized by the presence of an inappropriate performance in mechanisms that regulate attention, the reflectivity and motor activity. It starts early, with tendency to chronic evolution, showing significant repercussions in the functioning of the subject in various contexts of their life3-5. ADHD is the most common neuropsychiatric disorder of childhood and it is included among the most prevalent chronic diseases among students. In sources not listed, it is estimated that 3% to 6% of school-age children have ADHD6. The difficulty in paying attention is one of the most prevalent symptoms in children with this disorder. Socially, these children, often, are perceived as undisciplined, due to the difficulty of paying attention and following the rules, since ADHD is a disorder of the development of self-control that affects the attention, the control of impulses and the level of activity5,7,8. Thus, it is in the school context that anxiety and impulsivity are interpreted as lack of discipline and inattention, as neglect, since these ADHD symptoms may be observed early, even at stages earlier than the pre-school stage8,9. The difficulties of attention and hyperactivity displayed by these children may affect their academic performance because the language deficit displayed may compromise the learning of alphabetic writing system, considering that the abilities underlying this process, such as metalinguistic skills, impair this acquisition10,11. Several studies that have established a relationship between ADHD and learning of written language reported that the most prevalent learning problems affect the reading area (8-39%) and writing (60%)3,5,7,8,12-14. These studies have postulated the hypotheses that language deficits in children with ADHD are most likely related to cognitive activities regulated by organized behaviors that include aspects of speech. These activities can be named in a group of executive functions and include goals establishment, programming, initiation, control, interference inhibition, fluency, speed, temporal organization, sequencing, comparison, classification and categorization, which are associated with cortical and subcortical systems of the frontal lobes7,15,16. Being structured cognitive functions of multiple components, which may be specific to certain functions or have associations with each other, functions such as language acquisition and academic learning can be committed at different ages of the child development with the ADHD disorder. It should be, therefore, considered that this disorder has a neurobiological basis causing changes in cognitive mechanisms that are associated with learning, such as sustained attention, executive functions, motor inhibition deficit, among others 4-6,9,11,16,17. Moreover, Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

taking into account that later acquisitions, like the acquisition of reading and writing in a alphabetic based system, depend on the underlying aspects of oral language as a good development of metalinguistic skills in pre-school, it can be expected that such children have deficits in language strongly related to the academic deficits 4,14,18,19. For activities such as reading single words or text a refined visual processing of graphic signs is needed to execute the text scanning for the constituent parts of the word identification, being necessary to consider that this visual processing is related to the linguistic processing of reading, which is responsible for the word identification through the process of phonological decoding. This process allows the conversion of graphic signs in phonological representations. Children who have attention issues or have difficulty processing information will have difficult to start a refined visual processing, which will undermine phonological access required to reading and writing of an alphabetic system5,19-22. Considering the aspects set out, this article aimed to characterize and compare the performance of students with ADHD in metalinguistic and reading tasks with children with no complaints of behavioral disorders and/or learning disabilities.

„„ METHOD Twenty students from the 4th to 8th grade of elementary school were the subjects of this study, where fourteen were male students and six female students, aged between 9 and 13 years old. The students were divided in two groups described as following: Group I (GI): consists of ten children diagnosed with interdisciplinary ADHD. The diagnosis of ADHD of these students was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of the Research Laboratory of Deviations, part of the Learning Center for the Study of Education and Health - CEES / UNESP - Marília, including speech, neurological and neuropsychological evaluation, following the criteria proposed by DSM-IV23. All students in this group were taking medication for at least six months before the evaluation. Group II (GII): composed by ten students without behavioral disorders and/or learning disorder. These students were paired with students of the GI according to age and grade level. The students of municipal public education of the group GII were indicated by their teachers following the criterion of satisfactory academic performance in two consecutive bimesters in evaluations of Portuguese Language and Mathematics. From this indication, the students had previously been submitted

Performance of students with and without ADDT

to otorhinolaryngological, hearing and vision evaluations, and only those who showed results within normal limits participated in this study. The classification of socioeconomic status was made based in statistical study of the SocioEconomic Development Index – IDESE24, thus ensuring the homogeneity of the sample in terms of socioeconomic status. It was considered as inclusion criterion for Group I that the students had absence of auditory or visual complaints registered in the schools’ records or observations made by teachers and, for the Group II that the students had showed interdisciplinary diagnosis of ADHD in at least six months. The exclusion criterion were considered the absence of parent or responsible person signature of the Consent Term, conforming to National Health Council CNS 196/96 resolution, the absence of sensory, motor or cognitive impairment mentioned in the schools’ records or observations made by teachers. As a procedure, it was applied reading and metalinguistic tests of the PROHMELE (Protocol of metalinguistic skills and reading tests)25, described as following: Test of syllabic and phonemic identification: Identification of Initial Syllable (ISI), Identification of Initial Phoneme (IFI), Identification of Final Syllable (ISF), Identification of Final Phoneme (IPF), Identification of Medial Syllable (ISM), Identification of Medial Phoneme (IPM). Test of syllabic and phonemic manipulation: Syllabic Segmentation (Seg Sil), Phonemic Segmentation (Seg Fon), Syllabic Addition (Ad Sil), Phonemic Addition(Ad Fon), Syllabic Replacement (Subs Sil), Phonemic Replacement (Subs Fon), Syllabic Subtraction (Subt Sil), Phonemic Subtraction (Subt Fon), Combination of syllables (Com Sil), Combination of phonemes (Com Fon). Reading Test: a list of isolated real words was presented (133 words); Pseudo words Reading: a list of pseudo words was presented (27 pseudo words). The pseudo words are understood as a syllable or a sequence of syllables that belongs to the language, but did not form any meaningful word26. The pseudo words are derived from a real word, changing only one element and keeping the syllabic pattern. The application of metalinguistic skills tests were performed so that the student had no visual clue of the articulation of the sounds produced by the examiner. The responses of the student were registered on the answer sheet of the PROHMELE. The students were previously instructed and trained by similar test examples to know what to do.

The reading tests were conducted aloud and recorded on a digital recorder for later reading analysis. Each student received instruction on how he should read the words lists, presented using sized 14 arial font, double space, divided into columns by words extension (monosyllabic, disyllabic, trisyllabic and polysyllabic – of 4-7 syllables) and pseudo words (monosyllabic, disyllabic, trisyllabic). In reading pseudo words test, it was clarified that the students would read words that do not exist and that, therefore, do not take part of their vocabulary. The tests were given individually in a session of about 50 minutes length. All the tests from this study were analyzed following the criteria of errors. The characterization of the types of real words and pseudo words reading errors were made based on criteria established for the Brazilian Portuguese26, as described below: • D1 – context-independent grapho-phonemics matching rule regarding the regular words with univocal correspondence. • D2 – context-dependent grapho-phonemics matching rule regarding the rules applied to irregular words. • D4-Values of the letter “X” exclusively dependent on the mental lexicon and orthographic. In reading pseudo words test, only the rule D1 was considered, because their goal is to verify the univocal correspondence between letter and sound. The children of the GI were evaluated 30 minutes after the drug (methylphenidate) administration, since without the medication it was not possible to conduct the evaluation proposed in this study. Two sessions for assessment lasting 30 minutes each were realized. The students of GII were evaluated in a session in a classroom provided by the administration, at a time predetermined by the teacher of each school This work was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution, under protocol number 3326/2006. We adopted a significance level of 5% (0.050) for the application of statistical tests, that means, when the value of the calculated significance (p) is less than 5% (0.050) there was a difference or a relationship called “ statistically significant “ (marked in asterisk). The software used was SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), in version 19.0, to obtain the results.

„„ RESULTS After statistical analysis of the data by applying the Mann-Whitney Test, in order to verify possible differences between both groups for the variables of Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

Cunha VLO, Silva C, Lourencetti MD, Padula NAMR, Capellini SA

interest, it was observed, as shown in Table 1, that the tests of syllables identification and phonemes were not significant between the groups in the studied variables. In Table 2, it was observed that the tests of syllables and phonemes manipulation was significant (marked with an asterisk in the table) between the groups in Phonemic Segmentation, Syllabic Addition, Phonemic Addition, Syllabic Substitution, Phonemic Substitution, Syllabic Combination and Phonemic Combination, indicating that with these variables the group GII had outperformed the group GI. In real words and pseudo words reading tests, described in Table 3, there were statistically significant differences (marked with an asterisk in the table) for words related to the rule D1, which are the regular words, with context-independent Graphophonemics matching. Table 4 shows the results of reading real words regarding the rules from D2.1 to D2.11, corresponding to irregular words, with context-dependent Grapho-phonemics matching rules. It was observed that there was a statistically significant difference (marked with an asterisk in the table) between the groups only for the rules D2.3 and D2.5. The rule D2.3 refers to “s” grapheme reading at the end of the internal syllable; in its execution it copies the sound trace if the next letter represents a consonant

sound and copy the trace [-son] if it represents a null consonant. The rule D2.5 refers to reading the grapheme “z” in the beginning of word and syllable beginning; before the letters that represent vowels are transposed to the execution of the phoneme /z/. The group GII showed superior performance compared to the group GI. The table 5 shows the results of reading real words regarding the rules of D2.12 to D2.23, corresponding to irregular words, with context-dependent Grapho-phonemics matching rules. It was observed that there was statistically significant difference (marked with an asterisk in the table) between the groups, only for the rule D2.23, which refers to the rule corresponding to the reading of the grapheme “i” and “u”; they are read, respectively, as the execution of semivogais /j/ and /w/, when they appear followed or not of “s”, after the vowel in the same syllable (descending diphthong), in end of term and internal syllable; in the final syllable, internal, the occurrence of “s” is marginal; as the realization of semivogais /j/ and /w/, when they occur before of a vowel, followed by a consonant or not, in the same syllable (rising diphthong); as the realization of /i/ and /u/, respectively, if it is first letter, in the same syllable, not “m” or “n”. The group GII showed superior performance compared to the group GI. The table 6 shows the results of reading real words for the rule D4, referring to three values​​

Table 1 – Comparison between GI and GII in the tests of syllables and phonemes identification

Variable

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Max

I

0,40

1,27

0,00

4,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

0,20

0,42

0,00

1,00

II

0,20

0,63

0,00

2,00

I

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

II

0,40

0,97

0,00

3,00

I

1,00

1,89

0,00

5,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

0,60

1,27

0,00

4,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

1,40

1,84

0,00

5,00

II

0,70

1,34

0,00

4,00

ISI IFI ISF IFF ISM IFM

Significance (p) 0,317 0,626 0,503 0,234 0,068 0,325

Legend: ISI: identification of initial syllable; IFI: identification of initial phoneme; ISF: identification of final syllable; IFF: identification of final phoneme; ISM: identification of medial syllable; MFI: identifying of medial phoneme Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050 Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

Performance of students with and without ADDT

Table 2 – Comparison between GI and GII in tests of syllables and phonemes manipulation

Variable Seg Sil Seg Fon Ad Sil Ad Fon Subs Sil Subs Fon Subt Sil Subt Fon Com Sil Com Fon

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Mam

I

0,30

0,48

0,00

1,00

II

0,30

0,48

0,00

1,00

I

7,60

3,98

0,00

10,00

II

1,50

1,27

0,00

4,00

I

2,10

3,18

0,00

10,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

7,30

3,89

0,00

10,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

4,70

4,72

0,00

10,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

6,20

4,92

0,00

10,00

II

0,30

0,68

0,00

2,00

I

1,60

1,78

0,00

4,00

II

0,60

1,08

0,00

3,00

I

4,90

4,86

0,00

10,00

II

0,80

1,14

0,00

3,00

I

2,20

1,87

0,00

5,00

II

0,50

1,27

0,00

4,00

I

7,30

4,42

0,00

10,00

II

1,20

1,23

0,00

4,00

Significance (p) > 0,999 0,004* 0,040* < 0,001* 0,005* 0,004* 0,199 0,104 0,028* 0,012*

Legend: Seg Sil: syllabic segmentation; Seg Fon: phonemic segmentation, Ad Sil: syllabic addition; Ad Fon: phonemic addition, Subs Sil: syllabic replacement; Subs Fon: phonemic replacement; Subt Sil: syllabic subtraction; Subt Fon: phonemic subtraction; Com Sil: combination of syllables; Com Fon: combination of phonemes Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050

Table 3 – Compared between the groups GI and GII to the rules of D1 in readind real words and pseudowords

Variable D1 PR D1PP

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Max

I

8,80

14,18

0,00

45,00

II

0,44

0,88

0,00

2,00

I

3,80

4,19

0,00

14,00

II

0,40

0,52

0,00

1,00

Significance (p) 0,024* 0,007*

Legend: PR D1: context-independent grapho-phonemics matching rule regarding the real words; D1 PP: context-independent graphophonemics matching rule regarding the pseudo words Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050

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Cunha VLO, Silva C, Lourencetti MD, Padula NAMR, Capellini SA

Table 4 – Compared between the groups GI and GII to the rules of D2.1 to D2.11 in reading real words

Variable

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Max

I

0,44

1,01

0,00

3,00

II

0,33

1,00

0,00

3,00

I

3,30

7,38

0,00

24,00

II

0,22

0,44

0,00

1,00

I

1,30

2,11

0,00

6,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

0,22

0,44

0,00

1,00

II

0,22

0,67

0,00

2,00

I

0,70

0,95

0,00

2,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

0,60

1,08

0,00

3,00

II

0,22

0,67

0,00

2,00

I

1,20

2,10

0,00

6,00

II

0,78

1,39

0,00

4,00

I

0,60

0,52

0,00

1,00

II

0,63

0,92

0,00

2,00

I

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

1,30

3,13

0,00

10,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

0,50

0,71

0,00

2,00

II

0,20

0,63

0,00

2,00

I

0,50

1,07

0,00

3,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

0,50

1,41

0,00

4,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

I

1,56

4,30

0,00

13,00

II

0,00

0,00

0,00

0,00

D2.1 PR D 2.2 D 2.3 D 2.4 D 2.5 D 2.6.1 D 2.6.3 D 2.6.4 D 2.6.5 D 2.7 D 2.8 D 2.9 D 2.10 D 2.11

Significance (p) 0,586 0,118 0,039* 0,634 0,039* 0,330 0,741 0,768 > 0,999 0,068 0,178 0,104 0,264 0,126

Legend: D2: context-independent grapho-phonemics matching rule regarding the real words Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050

assigned to the letter “x” that depend exclusively of the internalization of the mental orthographic lexicon and its relationship with phonological mental lexicon, being “/x/”, /s/ and /k(i)s/ when in the context between letters that represent vowels (except the letter “e” at the beginning of the term, preceded or not by prefix), and between the diphthong /aw/ and vowel. The letter “x”, between letters that represent Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

vowels, if the second vowel starts the termination “imu” -/imo/ or “im” -/imi/ and their reflections, it is read with the realization of the phoneme /s/. It was observed that there was a statistically significant difference (marked with an asterisk in the table) between the groups, with superior performance for the group GII.

Performance of students with and without ADDT

Table 5 – Compared between the groups GI and GII to the rules of D2.12 to D2.23 in reading of real words

Variable D 2.12 D 2.13 D 2.14 D 2.15 D 2.16 D 2.17 D 2.18 D 2.19.1 D 2.19.2 D2.21 D 2.22 D 2.23

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Max

I

0,25

0,71

0,00

2,00

II

0,20

0,63

0,00

2,00

I

2,00

4,40

0,00

14,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

0,11

0,33

0,00

1,00

II

0,30

0,95

0,00

3,00

I

2,20

5,94

0,00

19,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

0,33

0,71

0,00

2,00

II

0,30

0,95

0,00

3,00

I

3,60

8,70

0,00

28,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

I

0,25

0,71

0,00

2,00

II

0,22

0,44

0,00

1,00

I

0,30

0,68

0,00

2,00

II

0,40

0,84

0,00

2,00

I

1,00

2,65

0,00

8,00

II

1,00

1,49

0,00

4,00

I

0,70

1,57

0,00

5,00

II

0,30

0,68

0,00

2,00

I

3,60

10,01

0,00

32,00

II

0,20

0,63

0,00

2,00

I

3,20

8,39

0,00

27,00

II

0,10

0,32

0,00

1,00

Significance (p) 0,871 0,213 > 0,999 0,234 0,563 0,101 0,717 0,914 0,458 0,618 0,255 0,049*

Legend: D2: context-dependent grapho-phonemics matching rule regarding the real words Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050

Table 6 – Compared between the groups GI and GII to the rules of D4 in reading of real words

Variable D4

Group

Mean

SD

Min

Max

I

1,50

1,51

0,00

4,00

II

0,22

0,44

0,00

1,00

Significance (p) 0,045*

Legend: D4: values of the letter “X” dependent exclusively of the mental lexicon and orthographic Statistical analysis: Mann-Whitney Test p-value:> 0.050

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Cunha VLO, Silva C, Lourencetti MD, Padula NAMR, Capellini SA

„„ DISCUSSION According to the results of this study, we can see that the average performance of the group GI, i.e., of students diagnosed with ADHD, was statistically lower than the performance of the group GII in all metalinguistic skills evaluated, having statistically significant differences in tests of syllable and phoneme manipulation, such as segmentation, addition, substitution and combination, which require attention and concentration more accurate in relation to the tasks of identifying syllables and phonemic identification11,25,27. Some metalinguistic skills tasks, as the syllables and phonemes identification, are considered simple, requiring only one operation followed by answers. However, more complex tasks, such syllables and phonemes manipulation, require the achievement of two operations, this mean, saving a unit in the memory while a new operation is made. Therefore, the answers vary with the type of operation that the student is required to do11,25,27. These data suggest that the performance of students with ADHD in these skills may have suffered interference factors of the diagnosis itself, such as the disorganization, hyperactivity and attention changes, interfering directly in the retention of information, making the processing of auditory and visual information difficult, as shown by studies that have attributed changes in auditory processing rather than to a primary deficit, but to the hypothesis that children with ADHD have these changes as a secondary phenomenon of their lack of attention. Our findings are consistent with the study30 results indicated that the symptoms of modified auditory processing coincide with many of the symptoms of ADHD. Among these symptoms, the difficulty of attention and listening, maladaptive behavior, easy to get distracted, difficulty following instructions and need for a longer than average time to complete tasks must be highlighted, they are factors that may interfere with the performance of metalinguistic tasks. The findings corroborate previously studies18,28 who pointed that the aspects of language most affected children with disorder of ADHD are the phonological, the syntactic and pragmatic aspects. These authors, investigated the semantic component through the tasks of semantic organization, auditory memory and verbal fluency, and they found values next to those of normal subjects. Thus, they concluded that the difficulties of phonetic-phonological and grammatical aspects are possibly caused by a difficulty in attention and inhibitory control of irrelevant stimuli rather than by a specific inability to handle the language aspects. Rev. CEFAC, São Paulo

Regarding the reading tests, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference in tests involving the rules D1, D2.3, D2.5, D2.23 and D2.4, in other words, tests concerning to the reading of real and irregular words and tests involving the values ​​of the letter “x”. The data findings corroborate studies20,21,31,32 which reported that reading changes described in ADHD are evidence of a sequence and temporal disruption of phonemes necessary to perform the proposed activity, since the difficulty in controlling the selection of the segment used, in case the phoneme, in conjunction with attention changes, leads to the omission of phonemes, syllables and/ or words, resulting in a impaired reading. Children with ADHD have abnormalities in reading and writing arising from deficits in working memory and phonological awareness, so the tests performance involving the reading of irregular real words will be changed, as the results found in this study. The results are consistent with previous research11, which showed that the prevalence of reading difficulties in children with ADHD is not a consequence of a language disorder of phonological base, but a secondary consequence of problems in self-regulation and attention inherent to ADHD. The authors argued that, initially, the decoding of words demand attention and self-regulation, areas that are often difficult for children with ADHD, so there is a strong association between ADHD and reading inability.

„„ CONCLUSION The findings of this study enabled us to conclude that students with ADHD did not differ from the group without complaints of behavioral and/or learning disorders in tasks considered simple, such as the identification of syllables and phonemes and in reading regular words. However, underperformed in tasks considered complex, such as syllable and phonemes manipulation and in irregular words reading, which require retention, analysis and information retrieval. Thus, the difficulties presented in these skills among students with ADHD can be attributed not to the primary deficit, but as a secondary phenomenon to inattention that interfere directly in their performance.

„„ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Coordination of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for supporting the research.

Performance of students with and without ADDT

RESUMO Objetivos: comparar e caracterizar o desempenho de escolares com Transtorno de Déficit de Atenção e Hiperatividade (TDAH) em tarefas metalinguísticas e de leitura com escolares sem queixa de transtornos comportamentais e/ou de aprendizagem. Método: participaram vinte escolares do 4º ao 8º ano do ensino fundamental, sendo catorze escolares do sexo masculino e seis do sexo feminino, na faixa etária de 9 a 13 anos. Os escolares foram divididos em dois grupos, sendo o GI composto por dez escolares com diagnóstico interdisciplinar de TDAH e o GII composto por dez escolares sem queixa de transtornos comportamentais e/ou de aprendizagem, pareados com os escolares do GI de acordo com a idade e o nível escolar. Foi utilizado como procedimento a aplicação de protocolo com provas de habilidades metalinguísticas e de leitura de palavras reais e pseudopalavras. Resultados: houve diferença estatisticamente significante entre os grupos nas tarefas de manipulação silábica e fonêmica, como também nas provas de leitura de palavras reais referentes à leitura de palavras regulares e palavras irregulares, bem como para as pseudopalavras. Conclusão: os escolares com Transtorno de Déficit de Atenção e Hiperatividade apresentaram desempenho inferior nas tarefas consideradas mais complexas, como a manipulação de sílabas e fonemas e na leitura de palavras irregulares, que exigem retenção, análise e recuperação de informação. As dificuldades apresentadas nessas habilidades pelos escolares com Transtorno de Déficit de Atenção e Hiperatividade podem ser atribuídas não a um déficit primário, mas como um fenômeno secundário à desatenção que interferem de forma direta em seu desempenho. DESCRITORES: Transtorno do Déficit de Atenção com Hiperatividade; Leitura; Aprendizagem; Linguística; Educação

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