Is There Comorbidity between Reading Disability and
Is There Comorbidity between Reading Disability andAttention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder? Past studies have found that individuals with a reading disability (RD) have a deficit in phonological decoding; a key role in reading development where one learns to translate a string of letters into the resultant sounds. Also, studies have shown that a deficit in phoneme assessment (PA) and other phonological processing account for the majority of cases of those with a reading disability. Studies show that individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have a deficiency in executive functioning, the cognitive functions that determine what is appropriate and what is not. These deficiencies are displayed through abnormal behavior. RD and ADHD are generally first identified during childhood or early adolescence. It has been determined that there is a small but significant common genetic cause for RD and ADHD; however, the specifics are unknown. The phenocopy hypothesis suggests that a person diagnosed with one disorder (RD or ADHD) may display signs of the other disorder but the disorder itself does not truly exist. For example, "a child might appear to be inattentive or hyperactive in the classroom because
One thing that should be investigated farther is the relation between ADHD and the child's diet, is it high in sugar and junk food; and also the child's home life, are they disciplined at home, or do they make the rules. However, it has been my experience that children with a reading disability do not have it due to ADHD, but rather it is because something is preventing them from understanding and they do become extremely frustrated. The individuals reading discriminant score was combined with their FSIQ (determined by the WISC-R) score to determine an IQ discrepant score in order to control the IQ scores of the individuals in the study. If one twin showed signs of learning difficulties, both were included in the study. Also, any child who used medication to control symptoms was restricted from using their medication 24 hours prior to the study. The popular notion that symptoms of ADHD disappear with age has been disproved by the results of this study, which show that the inhibitory deficit was considerably higher in older children. The researchers hypothesized that "ADHD would be associated with deficits on measures of inhibition and verbal working memory but not on measures of the ability to shift cognitive set. A comparison sample was collected in which neither twin showed signs of learning problems. Those with Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ) levels below 70, sex chromosome anomalies or other severe learning disorders were excluded from participating in the study. The following EF tasks were administered to determine if deficits in ADHD were confined to specific ER domains: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Contingency Naming Test, the Continuous Performance Test, the Stopping task, the Sentence Span task, the Counting span task, the Trailmaking Test, and the Stroop Color and Word Test. The results of this study do not support the phenocopy hypothesis as an explanation for comorbidity between RD and ADHD because there was no overlap in deficient areas among the RD group and the ADHD group, and the RD & ADHD group showed deficiency in all areas tested. " The current study took place at the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center and included 314 twins between 8 and 16 years of age from 27 school districts within a 150 mile radius of the Denver/Boulder area.
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