The Characteristics of Mazes in Story Retelling by Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Lim, Jongah; Hwang, Mina

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2009;14(1): 96-108.

Jongah Lim^` , and Mina Hwang^`

임종아(Jongah Lim)| 황민아(Mina Hwang)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
In the present study, we investigated the characteristics of mazes in stories retold both by children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and by their normal peers. Mazes were considered to represent linguistic disfluencies.
Methods
Thirty elementary school children in grades 1～3 participated in this study. Among them, 15 were nomal developing children and the rest were diagnosed with ADHD. The intelligence quotients (IQs)and language development of all participants fell within normal ranges. The participants were asked to retell a story after it had been presented auditorily by the examiner. The transcripts of the children's stories were analyzed using various measures, including the number of C-units, the mean length of a C-unit by word, the number of mazes per 100 unmazed words, and the relative frequencies of the different types of mazes. The types of mazes included fillers, repetitions, revisions, silent pauses, and others.
Results
The children with ADHD produced mazes more frequently than the normal children. Specifically, the children with ADHD produced fillers and repetitions more frequently than their normal peers.
Discussion & Conclusion
The frequent production of mazes in children with ADHD may reflect their underlying difficulties in planning, organizing and executing discourse production