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Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

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Abstract

This study focuses on the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and speech sound disorder (SSD). SSD is a developmental disorder characterized by speech production errors that impact intelligibility. Previous research addressing this comorbidity has typically used heterogeneous groups of speech–language disordered children. This study employed more precise speech–language diagnostic criteria and examined ADHD symptomatology in 108 SSD children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 23, 14 males, 9 females) and without SLI (n = 85, 49 males, 36 females). We also examined whether a subcategory of SSD, persistent (n = 39, 25 males, 14 females) versus normalized SSD (n = 67, 38 males, 29 females), was associated with ADHD and/or interacted with SLI to predict ADHD symptomatology. Results indicated that participants in the SSD + SLI group had higher rates of inattentive ADHD symptoms than those in the SSD-only and control groups. In addition, an unexpected interaction emerged such that children with SLI and normalized-SSD had significantly higher ADHD inattentive ratings than the other subgroups. A proposed explanation for this interaction is discussed.

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Notes

  1. The anchor for a rating of 2 on the parent questionnaire was “pretty much” whereas the anchor for a rating of 2 on the teacher questionnaire was “quite a bit.”

  2. Degrees of freedom that are decimals are from t-tests in which equality of variances was not assumed. In all cases, if the significance value when equality of variances was assumed versus not assumed differed, the corrected t-test was reported.

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Acknowledgements

The present study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD049027-22). The authors wish to extend their gratitude to the children and families who participated in this research and to our collaborators who helped collect the data for this project. Special thanks to Erik Willcutt and Nancy Raitano for their help at the inception of this project. We also wish to thank Irina Kaminer, Robin Peterson, and Erin Phinney for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Frontier Hall 2155 S. Race St., Denver, CO, 80209, USA

    Lauren M. McGrath, Christa Hutaff-Lee, Ashley Scott & Bruce F. Pennington

  2. School of Applied Psychology and Counselor Education, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, USA

    Christa Hutaff-Lee

  3. InterDepartmental Neuroscience Program, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Ashley Scott

  4. Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO, USA

    Richard Boada

  5. Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Lawrence D. Shriberg

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  1. Lauren M. McGrath
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Correspondence to Lauren M. McGrath.

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McGrath, L.M., Hutaff-Lee, C., Scott, A. et al. Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. J Abnorm Child Psychol 36, 151–163 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-007-9166-8

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