Abstract
A story retelling task was used to assess narrative abilities in 30 boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 30 normally developing boys, matched on age and IQ. Each boy listened to two stories and retold them for another child. Results indicated that the two groups did not differ in their ability to comprehend and extract the main ideas from the stories, but did differ in the production of narratives. Boys with ADHD provided less information overall, and their stories were more poorly organized and less cohesive and contained more inaccuracies. As a result, their stories were often confused and hard to follow. Organization and monitoring of information are functions of executive control. Thus the observed deficits in narrative production in children with ADHD may reflect underlying deficits in executive processes.
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This work was supported by funds from Health and Welfare Canada (NHRDP) and Medical Research Council of Canada. Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Zandvoort, The Netherlands, June 1991. The authors gratefully acknowledge Michael Marriott and Patricia Fulford for their assistance with data collection and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
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Tannock, R., Purvis, K.L. & Schachar, R.J. Narrative abilities in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal peers. J Abnorm Child Psychol 21, 103–117 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00910492
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00910492