Shani Terner

PI: Prof. Lilach Shalev-Mevorach
School of Education

The association between attention functioning and patterns of
reading errors in children with ADHD

Many children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience reading difficulties. Various studies indicate inconsistent findings regarding these difficulties. To better understand this, my MA study examined whether the attentional functions of children with ADHD, (in 3rd to 6th grades), were related to the frequency and type of errors they make in reading, (using the word reading screening battery - TILTAN by (Friedmann & Gvion, (2003)), and tried to characterize the pattern of reading errors among children with ADHD in light of their attention profile, which was assessed according to the Four Attentional Functions model (Tsal, Shalev, & Mevorach, 2005) .In addition, I examined the developmental aspect in the context of both word reading and attention functioning. 

As expected, the results indicated significant developmental improvements in both attentional function and word reading among 3rd-6th graders with ADHD. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between attention control (more specifically, the ability to ignore irrelevant information) and reading accuracy (the ability to read a word/word pair accurately). In addition, a significant relationship was found between the rate of reading errors and the length of the reading task, regardless of grade or the ability to stay focused over a long period of time (sustained attention).

These findings can help students with attention and/or reading difficulties, for example shortening or dividing tests, to attenuate the substantial increase in the rate of reading errors found during the later stages of the task. Another implication would be to develop attention control while reading, that is, to pay more attention to the relevant aspects of the reading material (letters, punctuation, word meaning with relation to the context) and to inhibit irrelevant aspects (such as adjacent words). The relation that was found between attention control and reading accuracy may affect additional learning difficulties experienced by students with/without ADHD.