Social Functioning in Youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Sluggish Cognitive Tempo.

The current review summarizes the research to date on social functioning for youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with a focus on three key domains: peer rejection, friendship, and social information processing. The review extends past reviews by examining the research to date on how the presence of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) symptoms, a common correlate of ADHD, affects the social presentation of youth with ADHD. Overall, youth with ADHD show significant difficulty with peer rejection, forming and maintaining friendships, and abnormalities in how they process and respond to social information. Further, the presence of SCT symptoms results in great social withdrawal and isolation. Future studies are needed to better understand the social difficulties of youth with ADHD, particularly using experimental approaches that can manipulate and isolate mechanisms within the social information processing model. In addition, novel intervention approaches are needed to more effectively ameliorate the social difficulties of youth with ADHD and those with co-occurring SCT symptoms.

Predicting children's school grades: Unique and interactive effects of parental beliefs and child inattention/hyperactivity symptoms.

Parental beliefs about school involvement are key in predicting individual differences in children's academic success. The current study examined unique and interactive relations between parental beliefs and child inattention/hyperactivity symptoms in predicting children's achievement. Participants (N = 348) were caregivers of children aged 8-12. Caregivers completed questionnaires regarding their beliefs and their child's inattention/hyperactivity and achievement. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated lower child inattention/hyperactivity and greater parental confidence in their ability to help their child academically predicted better achievement. Parent/child interactions probed with simple slopes suggested an achievement gap for children with higher inattention/hyperactivity only when their parents felt less efficacious or more responsible for their child's academic success. This suggests parent self-efficacy may buffer the negative relation between children's inattention/hyperactivity symptoms and underachievement, and parents of children with higher inattention/hyperactivity may increasingly assume responsibility for their success due to feedback from the school. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Academic achievement predicts several short- and long-term outcomes for children. Parental involvement beliefs are multi-faceted and predict children's academic success. Child inattention/hyperactivity symptoms are related to lower academic achievement. What does this study add? It provides specificity of previous relations for children with a range of inattention/hyperactivity symptoms. It identifies parental self-efficacy as a promising moderator of the relation between child behaviour and academics. It provides a preliminary evidence base for future work on the role of parental beliefs in child academic outcomes.

Working memory and organizational skills problems in ADHD.

BACKGROUND: This study tested model-driven predictions regarding working memory's role in the organizational problems associated with ADHD. METHOD: Children aged 8-13 (M = 10.33, SD = 1.42) with and without ADHD (N = 103; 39 girls; 73% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic) were assessed on multiple, counterbalanced working memory tasks. Parents and teachers completed norm-referenced measures of organizational problems (Children's Organizational Skills Scale; COSS). RESULTS: Results confirmed large magnitude working memory deficits (d = 1.24) and organizational problems in ADHD (d = 0.85). Bias-corrected, bootstrapped conditional effects models linked impaired working memory with greater parent- and teacher-reported inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and organizational problems. Working memory predicted organization problems across all parent and teacher COSS subscales (R2  = .19-.23). Approximately 38%-57% of working memory's effect on organization problems was conveyed by working memory's association with inattentive behavior. Unique effects of working memory remained significant for both parent- and teacher-reported task planning, as well as for teacher-reported memory/materials management and overall organization problems. Attention problems uniquely predicted worse organizational skills. Hyperactivity was unrelated to parent-reported organizational skills, but predicted better teacher-reported task planning. CONCLUSIONS: Children with ADHD exhibit multisetting, broad-based organizational impairment. These impaired organizational skills are attributable in part to performance deficits secondary to working memory dysfunction, both directly and indirectly via working memory's role in regulating attention. Impaired working memory in ADHD renders it extraordinarily difficult for these children to consistently anticipate, plan, enact, and maintain goal-directed actions.