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. 2009 Oct;37(7):995-1006.
doi: 10.1007/s10802-009-9323-3.

Priming sentence production in adolescents and adults with attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder

Paul E Engelhardt  1 , Fernanda Ferreira, Joel T Nigg
Affiliations

Priming sentence production in adolescents and adults with attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder

Paul E Engelhardt et al. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2009 Oct.

Abstract

Theoretical accounts of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) posit a prominent role for problems in response inhibition (Nigg 2006). A key avenue for impulsivity in children with ADHD is inappropriate language expression. In this study, we sought to determine whether poor inhibitory control affects language production in adolescents and adults with ADHD. One hundred and ninety-five participants (13-35 years old; 65% male) were presented with two pictures and a verb, and their task was to form a sentence. If deficits in response inhibition affect language production, then participants with ADHD should be more likely than non-ADHD controls to begin speaking before having formulated a plan that will allow a grammatical continuation. The results showed that the ADHD-combined subtype, in particular, was more likely to produce an ungrammatical sequence. Effects were not moderated by age or gender. These data suggest that response suppression deficits in ADHD adversely affect the basic processes of sentence formation.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Example stimuli, panel a shows an ambiguous verb, and panel b shows a participle verb
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Proportion of grammatical utterances produced. Panel a shows the proportion in each of the four within subject conditions. Panel b shows the (grammatical) sentence types produced in the two participle verb conditions. Error bars show the standard error of the mean
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Reaction time for voice onsets. Panel a shows in the condition means for all utterances in each of the four within subject conditions. Panel b shows the reaction times for the ungrammatical utterances in the two participle verb conditions. Error bars show the standard error of the mean
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