Abstract
It has been increasingly believed that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disorder with lifelong course associated with cognitive difficulties including among others, language production, verbal learning, and verbal fluency. However, research is limited to children and adolescents, and very few researchers have examined the impact of ADHD in adulthood on the cognitive domain. The aim of the present study is to examine the performance of adults, diagnosed with ADHD in childhood, on semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks. It is hypothesized that adults with ADHD will perform worse on both tasks than matched controls. Sixty university students (30 diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and 30 matched controls) of mean age 20.5 participated in the study. They all completed two verbal fluency tasks. The ADHD group had statistically significant lower scores than the non-ADHD group on the phonemic, but not the semantic task. The study provides some evidence that ADHD in childhood has a negative impact on adults’ phonemic verbal fluency. This finding could be probably explained by the fact that phonemic fluency is considered more cognitively demanding and impacting more on the frontal lobe functions, known to be impaired in ADHD, than semantic fluency.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andreou G, Karapetsas A, Gourgoulianis K, Agapitou P (2003) Verbal intelligence and sleep disorders in children with ADHD. Percept Mot Skills 96:1283–1288
Andreou G, Agapitou P, Karapetsas A (2005) Verbal skills in children with ADHD. Eur J Spec Needs Educ 20(2):231–238
Barkley RA (1998) Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a handbook for diagnosis and treatment, 2nd edn. Guilford Press, New York
Barkley RA, Fischer M, Edelbrock CS, Smallish L (1990) The adolescent outcome of hyperactive children diagnosed by research criteria: i. An 8-year prospective follow-up study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 29:546–557
Barkley R, Grodzinsky G, DuPaul G (1992) Frontal lobe functions in attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity: a review and research report. J Abnorm Child Psychol 20:163–188
Barkley RA, Murphy K, Kwasnik D (1996) Psychological adjustment and adaptive impairments in young adults with ADHD. J Atten Disord 1:41–54
Biederman J, Faraone SV, Spencer T, Wilens T, Normal D, Lapey KA, Mick E, Lehman BK, Doyle A (1993) Patterns of psychiatric comorbidity, cognition and psychosocial functioning in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Am J Psychiatry 150:1792–1798
Boonstra AM, Oosterlaan J, Sergeant AJ, Buitelaar KJ (2005) Executive functioning in adult ADHD: a meta-analytic review. Psychol Med 35(8):1097–1108
De Quiros BG, Kinsboune M (2001) Adult ADHD: analysis of self-ratings on a behaviour questionnaire. Ann NY Acad Sci 931:140–147
Dinn WM, Robbins NC, Harris CL (2001) Adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: psychological test profiles in a clinical population. Brain Cogn 46:114–121
Engelhardt EP, Ferreira F, Nigg TJ (2009) Priming sentence production in adolescents and adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. J Abnorm Child Psychol 37:995–1006
Fischer M, Barkley R, Edelbrock C, Smallish L (1990) The adolescent outcome of hyperactive children diagnosed by research criteria: II academic, attention and neuropsychological status. J Consult Clin Psychol 58:580–588
Grodzinsky GM, Diamond R (1992) Frontal lobe functioning in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Dev Neuropsychol 8:427–445
Hervey SA (2004) Neuropsychology of adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analytic review. Neuropsychology 18(3):485–503
Hurks PM, Hendriksen JGM, Vles JSH, Kalff CA, Feron FJM, Kroes M, Van Zeben TMCB, Steyaert J, Jolles J (2004) Verbal fluency over time as a measure of automatic and controlled processing in children with ADHD. Brain Cogn 55:535–544
Hynd GW, Semrud-Clikeman M, Lorys A, Novey ES, Eliopulos D (1990) Brain morphology in developmental dyslexia and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity. Arch Neurol 47:919–926
Jenkins AM, Cohen R, Malloy P, Salloway S, Johnson EG, Penn J, Marcotte A (1998) Neuropsychological measures which discriminate among adults with residual symptoms of attention deficit disorder and other attentional complaints. Clin Neuropsychol 12:74–83
Johnson ED, Epstein NJ, Waid LR, Latham KP, Voronin EK, Anton FR (2001) Arch Clin Neuropsychol 16:587–604
Kosmidis M, Vlachou HC, Panagiotaki P, Kiosseoglou G (2004) The verbal fluency task in the Greek population: normative data and clustering and switching strategies. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 10:164–172
Lezak MD (1995) Neuropsychological assessment, 3rd edn. Oxford University Press, New York
Lovejoy DW, Ball JD, Keats M, Stutts ML, Spain EH, Janda L, Janusz J (1999) Neuropsychological performance of adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): diagnostic classification estimates for measures of frontal lobe/executive functioning. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 5:222–233
Nadeau KG (1995) A comprehensive guide to attention-deficit disorder in adults. Brunner/Mazer, New York
Pennington BF, Ozonoff S (1996) Executive functions and developmental psychopathology. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 37:51–87
Pineda D, Ardila A, Rosselli M, Cadavid C, Mancheno S, Mejia S (1998) Executive dysfunctions in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Int J Neurosci 96:177–196
Reader MJ, Harris E, Schuerholz LJ, Denckla MB (1994) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and executive dysfunction. DevNeuropsychol 10:493–512
Riva D, Nichelli F, Devoti M (2000) Developmental aspects of verbal fluency and confrontation naming in children. Brain Lang 71:267–284
Shaffer D (1994) Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults. Am J Psychiatry 151:633–638
Szatkowska I, Grabowska A, Szymanska O (2000) Phonological and semantic fluencies are mediated by different regions in the prefrontal cortex. Acta Neurobiol Exp 60:503–508
Teeter AP (1998) Interventions for ADHD: treatment in developmental context. The Guilford Press, New York
Troyer AK (2000) Normative data for clustering and switching on verbal fluency tasks. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 33:370–378
Troyer AK, Moscovitch M, Winocur G (1997) Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: evidence from younger and older healthy adults. Neuropsychology 11:138–146
Tucha O, Mecklinger L, Laufkotter R, Kaunzinger I, Paul G, Klein H, Lange K (2005) Clustering and switching on verbal and figural fluency functions in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Cogn Neuropsychiatry 10(3):231–248
Walker AJ, Shores EA, Trollor JN, Lee T, Sachdev PS (2000) Neuropsychological functioning of adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 22:115–124
Welsh MC, Pennington BF (1998) Assessing frontal lobe fuctioning in children: views from developmental psychology. Dev Neuropsychol 4(3):199–230
Weiss G, Hechtman LT (1993) Hyperactive children grown up. Guilford Press, New York
Wender PH (1995) Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults. Oxford Press, New York
Weyandt L, Willis W (1994) Executive functions in school-aged children: potential efficacy of discriminating clinical groups. Dev Neuropsychol 10:27–38
Wilens TE, Biederman J, Spencer TJ (2002) Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder across the lifespan. Annu Rev Med 53:113–131
Woods SP, Lovejoy DW, Ball JD (2002) Neuropsychological characteristics of adults with ADHD: a comprehensive review of initial studies. Clin Neuropsychol 16:12–34
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix: Non-diagnostic ADHD questionnaire
Appendix: Non-diagnostic ADHD questionnaire
Indicate the degree you feel the following symptoms for more than six months: 1 = not at all present; 2 = just a little; 3 = pretty much.
-
a.
restless or overactive
-
b.
excitable, impulsive
-
c.
disturb other people
-
d.
fail to finish things you start; short attention span
-
e.
constantly fidgeting
-
f.
inattentive, easily distracted
-
g.
demands must be met immediately; easily frustrated
-
h.
cry often and easily
-
i.
mood changes quickly and drastically
-
j.
temper outbursts, explosive and unpredictable behavior
(Adapted from Conners Hyperctivity Index, 1998, cited in De Quiros and Kinsbourne 2001.)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Andreou, G., Trott, K. Verbal fluency in adults diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood. ADHD Atten Def Hyp Disord 5, 343–351 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12402-013-0112-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12402-013-0112-z