Narrative writing skills of children with and without ADHD

Abstract

Objectives: Writing is an important function used in daily activities and it is critical for the achievement in all learning areas. Thus, this study on the writing ability in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has its importance. Methods: 16 children with ADHD and 16 normal children without from 3 to 4 grades at the elementary school participated in the study. The experiment was to listen to familiar and non-familiar stories, and then to write stories about what children have perceived in order to compare the performances of children with ADHD to that of the normal children. Results: Children with ADHD recalled the story units less than normal children and showed difficulties in writing complete episode of non-familiar conditions. When analyzing the ability of story composition, children with ADHD made poorer performance, as compared to normal children regardless of the familiarity of the story. However, there were differences in the sub-elements which showed poor performances under each condition. The average number of clauses per C-unit has no significant difference between the two groups, but both groups used the complex syntax in a non-familiar condition. And children with ADHD made sentences with syntactic errors and spelling errors more significantly than normal children under both conditions. Conclusion: Children with ADHD showed lower performances than normal children in both the quantity and the quality of writing and the former group was more affected by the familiarity of the story than the latter. Regardless of the story's familiarity, children with ADHD proved to have more syntactic errors and spelling errors than the normal children.