Assessment of Pragmatic Aspect of Language in Children Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Eman Abdallah Fadel Abdalla, Sabah Mohamed Hassan, Maha Hussein Boshnaq- General Medicine
Abstract
Background
Assessment of the pragmatic language development in the Arabic speaking societies was a competence in the previous years. Recently, an Egyptian Arabic Pragmatic Language Test was developed (EAPLT). The relation between ADHD and language is especially intuitive in young children. No previous study used the EAPLT to evaluate pragmatic aspect of language in children with ADHD.
Aim
This study aimed to assess the pragmatic aspect of language in children with ADHD.
Methods
A case control study design was used. Fifty patients with ADHD were enrolled randomly from 4 to 8 years old and a normal group of children with the same age and number randomly selected by systemic random sampling from classrooms of different schools in Cairo. Data regarding the child’s age, sex, IQ, mental age, the expressive and the receptive language ages by the Modified PLS4, the pragmatic language age range, percentile, the acquired and the delayed pragmatic language skills according to EAPLT were collected.
Results
Results showed that Language in general was affected in children diagnosed with ADHD, receptive and expressive language age was significantly different than the normal group (p value for receptive=0.017) (p value for expressive=0.024). In the ADHD group 25 children (50%) of the group showed delayed receptive language, and 28 children (56%) of them showed delayed expressive language. The pragmatics aspect of language assessment (p < 0.001) showed significant difference between ADHD and control groups in almost all aspect of pragmatics. Also in conversation skills the results (p < 0.001) showed significant difference between ADHD and control group.
Conclusion
This study showed that children with ADHD had a delayed language, pragmatics and conversational skills compared to normal controls within the same age and IQ.