The incidence of dysgraphia in Arabic language in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Abstract

Background: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development. Although children with ADHD made much more spelling errors, they had a distinct pattern of letter insertions, replacements, transpositions, and omissions. This mistake type is sometimes referred to as graphemic buffer errors, and it is caused by a lack of attention required for motor planning. The aim of study was to assess the incidence of dysgraphia in Arabic language in children with ADHD for better helping, diagnosis and management of those children. Results: Ten percent of ADHD children had normal handwriting with no disability, 40% had excellent handwriting with a minimum of disability and 50% of ADHD children showed mild to moderate disability. There were significant differences between ADHD children and control children regarding results of each item on the subtest of handwriting of dysgraphia disability scale (DDS), respecting lines, spacing between words, letter direction, spelling a sentence, and punctuation. Drawing affected in ADHD children. The finger tapping speed was affected in almost ADHD children. Conclusions: Dysgraphia highly presents in our sample of ADHD children with poor fine motor skills in ADHD children than normal children. ADHD children have illegible handwriting, not respecting lines, insufficient space between and within words, multiple spelling errors, and omissions of letters or words. Graphesthesia and stereognosis are affected more in ADHD children than in control children drawing and finger tapping speed affected in ADHD children.