Sex differences in school-aged children with pervasive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Horn, Wade F.; Wagner, Anne; N, lalongo

doi:10.1007/bf00910773

Cited by 91 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This result is consistent with several previous studies that found no differences on cognitive measures between boys and girls with ADHD (Breen, 1989;Horn, Wagner, & Ialongo, 1989), but some studies suggest that girls with ADHD have lower intelligence scores and more learning problems than boys with ADHD (Brown, Madan-Swain, & Baldwin, 1991;Gaub & Carlson, 1997;James & Taylor, 1990). The examination of sex differences in the cognitive and academic profiles of girls and boys with ADHD is an area that has important implications for identification and treatment and will require further cross-sectional and longitudinal study to reconcile these discrepant findings from studies that used different age groups and ascertainment strategies.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Sex Differences in Young Children Who Meet Criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Hartung

Willcutt²,

Lahey³

et al. 2002

Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Examined sex differences in a mostly clinic-referred sample of 127 children (22 girls, 105 boys) who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; [DSM-IV], American Psychiatric Association, 1994) The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been found to be higher among boys and girls in many studies, although the male to female ratio is apparently smaller in population-based samples than in clinic samples (Barkley, 1998;Gomez, Harvey, Quick, Scharer, & Harris, 1999;Lahey, Miller, Gordon, & Riley, 1999;Szatmari, Offord, & Boyle, 1989). In addition, there is emerging evidence of sex differences among children who meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD. In a meta-analysis, Gaub and Carlson (1997) summarized the literature on sex differences in ADHD. To be included in the meta-analysis, each study was required to include (a) data comparing boys with ADHD to girls with ADHD, (b) participants age 13 and younger who had intelligence scores above 70, and (c) at least 10 participants in each group. As of 1994, Gaub and Carlson found 18 studies that met these criteria. Gaub and Carlson's meta-analysis showed no significant differences between boys and girls with ADHD on measures of impulsivity, academic performance, social functioning, or fine motor skills. In contrast, girls with ADHD scored lower than boys with ADHD on measures of global intelligence, whereas boys with ADHD exhibited higher levels of hyperactivity. Consistent with Gaub and Carlson's finding of higher levels of hyperactivity among boys who meet criteria for ADHD than girls, recent reviews by Carlson, Shin, and Booth (1999) and Milich, Balentine, and Lynam (2001) suggest that a greater of

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Sex Differences in Young Children Who Meet Criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Hartung

Willcutt²,

Lahey³

et al. 2002

Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, the defiant behavior is not manifested through an isolated circumstance but pervasive across different situations. This approach is consistent with that of Horn, Wagner, and Ialongo (1989) favoring the diagnostic import of pervasive behavior and with the view that behavior emergent only in isolated situations is far more likely to be random or reactive than pathognomonic.…”

supporting

confidence: 71%

Situational specificity makes the difference in assessment of youth behavior disorders

McDermott

Steinberg

Angelo

2005

Psychology in the Schools

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article we examine the ability of contextual information to enhance assessment of behavior problems in schools. Capitalizing on the multisituational structure of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, exploratory and confirmatory analyses with a representative national sample (N ϭ 1,400, ages 5-17 years) revealed three unique and reliable behavioral situtypes (problems in Peer Contexts, Academic Contexts, and Teacher Contexts). The situtypes were found internally consistent and structurally generalizable across age, sex, and ethnicity. Multiple logistic and discriminant analyses confirmed the ability of the situtypes to identify accurately those youth independently diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, as well as distinguish those diagnosed as learning disabled. Information gleaned from the situtypes was substantially better able than conventional psychopathology syndromes (attention-deficit hyperactivity, oppositional defiance, etc.) to forecast later academic achievement. Implications for informing motivation and intervention are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.In 1999, the Surgeon General released a statement on the status of mental health in the United States. The report, Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1999), highlights the need to improve both the diagnosis and treatment of children with emotional and behavioral problems. The report further calls for the use of contextually relevant assessment as a means to improve diagnosis and treatment. As the term implies, contextual assessment attempts to understand children's behavior within the context(s) in which it occurs. It may best be understood in comparison to more traditional assessment procedures, specifically symptom checklists. Symptom checklists, such as the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1999) and Conners' Parent Rating Scales-Revised (Conners, 1997), are standardized behavioral measures designed to infer psychopathology based solely on the number and frequency or intensity of related symptoms. There are several problems with this approach to assessment. First, it produces ambiguous measures of behavior pathology without regard to contextual circumstances. Second, it does not provide information regarding whether the problematic behavior is isolated to specific situations or, alternatively, is pervasive across situations. Third, it increases the threat of bias and error inasmuch as raters must interpret global items in terms of children's motivation or the causes of that behavior (Mordell, 2001). Contextually based assessment methods address these problems by examining specific phenomena that occur within a particular situation or across many situations and by requiring respondents to report similar behaviors across multiple situations.The Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents (ASCA; McDermott, 1993) was developed as a contextually based assessment tool. The Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents is intended to define psych...

show abstract

“…The present results suggest, further, that girls may not be identified as often as boys because they perform better on objective measures of attention. Studies of children referred for AD/HD either report no gender differences in attention (Breen, 1989;Brown et al, 1991;Horn, Wagner, & Ialongo, 1989) or find more cognitive and learning problems in the girls (Berry et al, 1985;James & Taylor, 1990). Given that girls generally perform better on attention tests, it is possible that we are diagnosing with AD/HD only those girls with severe difficulties, and that, moreover, more girls may benefit from treatment than are currently being treated.…”

Section: Implications For Clinical Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Attention performance in an epidemiological sample of urban children: The role of gender and verbal intelligence

Pascualvaca¹,

Anthony

Arnold³

et al. 1997

Child Neuropsychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We administered a comprehensive attentional battery to an epidemiologically defined sample of 435 firstand second-grade children to assess the influence of gender and verbal intelligence on attention. The battery included three versions of the continuous performance test (CPT), two digit cancellation tasks, three subtests from the WISC-R, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The results indicated that both gender and intelligence had an impact on attentional performance. Girls performed better than boys; they made fewer errors on the CPT and obtained higher scores on the digit cancellation task and the Coding subtest of the WISC-R. Children with higher verbal intelligence also performed better on the attentional tests, but this advantage was not observed across measures or levels of performance. For example, children with limited verbal skills performed significantly worse than their peers only in measures with high processing demands (the degraded CPT and the distraction version of the digit cancellation task).Problems with attention represent one of the most pervasive behavioral disturbances encountered in psychiatric and educational contexts, and are estimated to affect as many as 30% of all school-aged children (Cantwell, 1975;Kellam, Branch, Agrawal, & Ensminger 1975;Offord et al., 1987;Rutter, Tizard, & Whitmore, 1970). Despite the ubiquity of attention deficits and their detrimental effects on the child's functioning, little is known about the factors that influence attentional performance in normal children. There is little information, for example, regarding the impact of certain characteristics such as age, intelligence, and gender, or environmental factors such as family background and socioeconomic status, on attentional performance. In this study, we report on the role of two of these characteristics, intelligence and

show abstract

Sex differences in school-aged children with pervasive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Cited by 91 publications

References 30 publications

Sex Differences in Young Children Who Meet Criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Sex Differences in Young Children Who Meet Criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Situational specificity makes the difference in assessment of youth behavior disorders

Attention performance in an epidemiological sample of urban children: The role of gender and verbal intelligence

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About