Poster #46 - Examining time processing impairments in children with ADHD: The role of parent-child interaction

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Developmental Disabilities

Integrative Statement

Time-processing difficulties has been identified as an independent neuropsychological component of ADHD (Sonuga-Barke et al.,2010) and the assessment of time-related skills may represent a valid method for distinguishing between ADHD versus other attention related psychiatric disorders (Walg et al.,2017). Time-related impairments, identified in the past with both behavioral tasks (Meaux & Chelonis,2003) and questionnaires (Houghton et al.,2011), affect daily routines, home and school activities, and social relations in children with ADHD. One area in which time-related impairments have not been examined is during caregiver-child interactions. Such area is particularly important to examine in young children in order to disentangle the extent to which any caregiver linguistic input relates to children with ADHD’s time-processing difficulties. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine differences in verbal interactions between children with ADHD and their parents compared to a typically developing (TD) sample. In addition to examining time-related concepts, we also examined potential differences in math and space-related words given some work identifying these areas as weaknesses for children with ADHD (Zentall,2007). We expected that children with ADHD’s verbal production would contain a poorer set of time-, math-, and space-related terms compared to TD.
Sixty preschoolers and their parents (30 diagnosed with ADHD and 30 TD) were involved in the study (65% males, mean age=5.10 years; SD=0.72). A twenty-minutes play session was video-recorded for each parent-child dyad. The verbal interactions where transcribed and coded for identifying words/expressions related to the categories of time (e.g., “later”,“tomorrow”), mathematics (e.g., “two more”,“some”), and space (e.g., “here/there”,“behind”). The total number of terms in each category (tokens) and the different terms within a category (types) were determined for both children and parents. The proportion of tokens and types in relation to the total verbal production for each individual was then calculated. MANOVAs run on children’s data (Figure1) showed similar number of tokens across categories for ADHD and TD (F(3,56)=1.054, p=.376), whereas a significant main effect of Group emerged for the types (F(3,56)=3.553, p=.020; ɳ2=.160): children with ADHD showed a poorer vocabulary of time-related words (F(1,58)=9.454, p=.003; ɳ2=.140) compared to TD, though the two groups were similar in the math and space categories (F(1,58)=.783-.006, p=.380-.938). MANOVAs run on parents’ data (Figure2) revealed significant main effect of Group for both tokens (F(3,56)=2.956, p=.040; ɳ2=.137) and types (F(3,56)=2.794, p=.049; ɳ2=.130). Univariate results showed that parents of children with ADHD used more tokens (F(1,58)=7.517, p=.008; ɳ2=.115) and types (F(1,58)=4.736, p=.034; ɳ2=.075) within the space-category, whereas no significant differences emerged for the other two categories (F(1,58)=.117-1.943, p=.169-.733).
These results reveal that time-processing impairments characterizing ADHD relate more to the quality (i.e.,heterogeneity) of time-related language production, not necessarily the quantity of time-related words produced. The lack of differences within children’s use of math and spatial words may be partially due to the young age of our sample. Our results may then suggest that the higher use of space-related words by parents of children with ADHD may be due to a greater use of commands as way to manage their children’s behavior.

Authors

• Valentina Tobia, University of Milan-Bicocca
  Presenting Author

• Taylor Landis, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paulo Graziano, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author