Comparison of the Performance of Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Phonological Tasks and Reading with Good Readers

This chapter aimed to compare and characterize the performance on metalinguistic skills and reading for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and students without behavioral disorders and/or learning disabilities. The study included 20 students from 5th to 8th grade level of elementary school, 14 students were males and six females, aged between 9-13 years. The student has divided in: Group I (GI): composed of 10 students with an interdisciplinary diagnostic ADHD, and Group II (GII): composed of 10 students without complaints of behavioral disorders and/or learning disabilities. With the procedure was used as Tests of metalinguistic skills and reading of the PROHMELE, compost of tests of syllabic and phonemic identification, tests of syllabic and phonemic manipulation, repetition of non-words and reading tests. The results showed statistically significant differences among GI and GII showing that students of the group GI presented lower performances in post when compared with the students of the group GII. The findings of this study allowed us to conclude that the difficulties presented in these PROHMELE skills by students with ADHD can’t be attributed to a primary deficit, but as a phenomenon secondary to inattention that interfere directly in their performance.

Keywords: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Metalinguistic skills, Reading.