The developmental trajectories of executive function of children and adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
In ADHD, inhibition and shifting lag behind peers, but working memory and planning do not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tracked executive-function growth in 5- to young learners.
They compared 180 Han Chinese kids with ADHD to 180 matched peers.
Each child took the same EF battery every year for three years.
What they found
Kids with ADHD stayed behind on two skills: stopping themselves and switching tasks.
Yet their working memory and planning grew on pace with peers.
In plain words, they catch up on memory and planning, but not on impulse control.
How this fits with other research
Neely et al. (2016) saw the same split in 6- to young learners, so the pattern starts early.
Vos et al. (2013) zoomed in on stopping speed and found ADHD kids are slow only when they must suddenly brake, not when they can prepare.
Laposa et al. (2017) looked at working memory and warned it is a weak yes/no test for ADHD, matching Ying’s finding that memory itself is not delayed.
Tonizzi et al. (2022) pooled many studies and still found inhibition as the sore spot, showing the 2013 result holds across cultures.
Why it matters
When you test a client with ADHD, expect trouble on tasks that need quick stopping or fast switching. Do not over-pathologize slow working-memory scores; instead, watch how they grow over time. Use this to set goals that build impulse control while leveraging their intact planning skills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study examined the developmental trajectories of executive function (EF) of children and adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Han Chinese. Five hundred and fifteen children and adolescents with ADHD and 249 healthy controls took part in this study. All of them were administered four EF tests capturing inhibition, working memory, shifting and planning components. The participants were further divided into four age groups, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12, and 13-15 years old, respectively, for developmental trajectories comparison. The performance of the typical developing children and adolescents aged 7-15 were reported to get stable at age 11-12 for inhibition, working memory and planning, and kept developing till age 13-15 for shifting. For inhibition and shifting, participants with ADHD displayed similar performance to the healthy controls who were 2 years younger whereas they did poorer than the healthy controls of their same age. And at age 13-15, such poorer performance disappeared for inhibition but maintained for shifting. No significant differences were found between participants with and without ADHD in working memory and planning across all age groups. The current findings suggested, compared with healthy controls, Han Chinese children and adolescents with ADHD displayed delayed developmental trajectories on inhibition and shifting, whereas they showed similar trend of development on working memory and planning.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.01.033