Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

This study focuses on the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and speech sound disorder (SSD). SSD is a developmental disorder characterized by speech production errors that impact intelligibility. Previous research addressing this comorbidity has typically used heterogeneous groups of speech-language disordered children. This study employed more precise speech-language diagnostic criteria and examined ADHD symptomatology in 108 SSD children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old with specific language impairment (SLI) (n=23, 14 males, 9 females) and without SLI (n=85, 49 males, 36 females). We also examined whether a subcategory of SSD, persistent (n=39, 25 males, 14 females) versus normalized SSD (n=67, 38 males, 29 females), was associated with ADHD and/or interacted with SLI to predict ADHD symptomatology. Results indicated that participants in the SSD + SLI group had higher rates of inattentive ADHD symptoms than those in the SSD-only and control groups. In addition, an unexpected interaction emerged such that children with SLI and normalized-SSD had significantly higher ADHD inattentive ratings than the other subgroups. A proposed explanation for this interaction is discussed.

Speech characteristics of 8-year-old children: Findings from a prospective population study

“…Increasingly however, it has been recognised that difficulties can persist beyond the early years and into older childhood. This is evident from recent studies that have investigated samples of children with persistent speech disorder (PSD) (Clark, Harris, Jollef, Price & Neville, 2010;Goozee, Murdoch, Ozanne, Cheng, Hill & Gibbon, 2007;McGrath, Hutaff-Lee, Scott, Boada & Shriberg, 2008;Peterson, Pennington, Shriberg & Boada, 2009;Shriberg, Potter & Strand, 2011). Yet population data on the speech characteristics of children beyond the age when speech acquisition is generally considered to be complete is lacking.…”

Effect of dialect on identification and severity of speech impairment in Indigenous Australian children

“…However, most Western research investigating speech impairment has focused chiefly on Caucasian, middle class, urban, English-speaking children who speak the standard variety of English in their specific geographical region (Bernhardt, Ball, & Deby, 2007) and exclude multilingual and multidialectal children (e.g. Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, & Patel, 1986;Tomblin, Records, Buckwalter, Zhang, Smith, & O'Brien, 1997;Shriberg, Tomblin, & McSweeny, 1999;Raitano, Pennington, Tunick, Boada, & Shriberg, 2004;Archibald & Gathercole, 2006;Rvachew, 2007;Sices, Taylor, Freebairn, Hansen, & Lewis, 2007;McGrath, Hutaff-Lee, Scott, Boada, Shriberg, & Pennington, 2008). Subsequently, the results and recommendations presented within the literature may not clearly reflect or assist culturally diverse groups.…”

Genome-Wide Association and Exome Sequencing Study of Language Disorder in an Isolated Population

“…3 DLD is lifelong, 4 comorbid with other neurodevelopmental 5 and psychiatric 6 disorders, and associated with adverse academic 7 and socio-emotional 8 outcomes. It is phenotypically complex and genetically heterogeneous; although highly heritable, 9 the etiology and pathogenesis of DLD are poorly understood.…”