Characteristics and relationship between the development of gross motor skills and executive function in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder / 中国康复理论与实践

ABSTRACT

ObjectiveTo investigate the developmental characteristics of gross motor skills and executive functions, and the correlation between them in school-age children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). MethodsFrom November, 2020 to May, 2021, 90 children with ADHD were recruited from Peking University Sixth Hospital and Beijing Haidian Wanquan Primary School, and other 90 children with normal development from this primary school were recruited matched their age and gender. Gross motor skills were assessed with the Test of Gross Motor Development in Children, Third Edition (TGMD-3), and inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility were assessed with Stroop Color Words Test (SCWT), Rey-Osterrich Complex Figure Test (ROCFT) and Trail Making Test (TMT), respectively. ResultsThe TGMD-3 score was significantly lower in children with ADHD than in normal children (t = -6.275, P < 0.001), while the test results of SCWT, ROCFT and TMT were worse (|t| ≥ 1.986, P ≤ 0.05). The TGMD-3 score of children with ADHD was negatively correlated with the word sense reaction time (r = -0.261), the number of word sense errors (r = -0.404) and the number of color errors (r = -0.326) (P < 0.05), positively correlated with the delayed structural memory scores (r = 0.228) (P < 0.05), and negatively correlated with the TMT-A reaction time (r = -0.255), the number of TMT-A errors (r = -0.329), TMT-B reaction time (r = -0.214) and the number of TMT-B errors (r = -0.474) (P < 0.05). Stratified linear regression analyses showed that the TGMD-3 score of children with ADHD was significant only in predicting test results for inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility (P < 0.05), with explanations of 8.7% and 22.5%, respectively. ConclusionDevelopments of both gross motor skills and executive function delay in children with ADHD, and there is a relation between them, especially the level of gross motor skills relating to the developments of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility.