Educational outcomes for students with ADHD are often negative. To better understand this problem, the purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the representation of individuals with ADHD in contemporary American English. Data was obtained from the Corpus of American Contemporary English (COCA), using all sections except the academic…

The Triangle Model of Reading proposes that phonology, orthography, and semantics are crucial to understand word reading and reading disability (RD). Morphology has been added as a binding agent to this model. However, it is unclear how these variables relate to word reading in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or…

This study investigated the communication skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (H. M. Geurts & M. Embrechts), Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Hilde M Geurts & Mariëtte Embrechts), and learning disability (H. M. Geurts & M. Embrechts) using the Children Communication Checklist to identify any commonalities in…

Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and…

This study examined how explicit instruction in semantic ambiguity detection affected the reading comprehension and metalinguistic awareness of five English learners (ELs) with learning difficulties (e.g., attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, specific learning disability). A multiple probe across participants design (Gast & Ledford, 2010)…

Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show high divergent thinking on standardized laboratory measures. This study assessed innovative thinking in adults with ADHD using a realistic task and investigated a possible cognitive mechanism for ADHD-related advantages in innovative thinking. College students with and without ADHD…

Enhanced semantic processing is associated with increased false recognition of items consistent with studied material, suggesting that children with poor semantic skills could produce fewer false memories. We examined whether memory errors differed in children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and controls. Children viewed 18…

Differentiating between early-onset bipolar disorder (BD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be difficult. Memory problems are commonly reported in BD, and forgetfulness is among the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. We compared children and adolescents with BD (n = 23), ADHD combined type (ADHD-C; n = 26), BD + ADHD-C (n = 15),…

To further explore contextual reading rate, an important aspect of reading fluency, we examined the relationship between word reading efficiency (WRE) and contextual oral reading rate (ORR), the degree to which they overlap across different comprehension measures, whether oral language (semantics and syntax) predicts ORR beyond contributions of…

ADHD is associated with academic underachievement, but it remains unclear what mechanism accounts for this association. Semantic language is an underexplored mechanism that provides a developmental explanation for this association. The present study will examine whether semantic language deficits explain the association between ADHD and reading…

Writing difficulties are common among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the nature of these difficulties has not been well studied. Here we relate behavioral, psycholinguistic, cognitive (memory/executive), and graphomotor measures to spelling skills in school-age girls with ADHD (n = 30) and an age-matched group…

Purpose: This study was designed to test the word learning abilities of adults with typical language abilities, those with a history of disorders of spoken or written language (hDSWL), and hDSWL plus attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (+ADHD). Methods: Sixty-eight adults were required to associate a novel object with a novel label, and then…

As a group, participants with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are impaired in academic performance and learning. This may be due to a mild intellectual impairment, impaired attention, or inability to allocate sufficient effort. If the latter is the case, this should be evident in the learning strategies applied. Four indices of…

Limited research has been conducted on the structure of the pars triangularis (PT) in dyslexia despite functional neuroimaging research finding it may play a role in phonological processing. Furthermore, research to date has not examined PT size in ADHD even though the right inferior frontal region has been implicated in the disorder. Hence, one…