Problemas de lenguaje en estudiantes con déficit atencional

Résumé

This work has two purposes: the analysis of the language abilities in Spanish children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to examine the effects of methylphenidate in their language abiities. The language abilities were investigated with a task requiring recall of a lengthy narrative and in tests assessing knowledge of the articulation, phonological processing, verbal fluency, morphology, syntax and semantic aspects. The study was conducted with 74 children, aged 5 to 12, 37 with ADHD and 37 as normal controls (25 subtype Combined and 12 subtype with predominance of Inattention). The evaluation was carried out in two phases: pretreatment and postreatment. Concretely the children received two daily dose of 0.5 mg/kg. of methylphenidate during two months. Children with ADHD demonstrated deficits in all the speech and language processing tests and exhibited difficulties in organizing and monitoring their story retelling. The two subtypes of ADHD did not differ significantly, except the tests of comprehension of the narration. The subtype ADHD/I had more difficulties to recall the information and established more erroneous causal connections between events. The methylphenidate produced improvements, although with certain variation in the phonological processing tests, improved the tasks of verbal fluency, morphology, syntax and semantic aspects and the narration and comprehension of the story. The children with ADHA show worse linguistic abilities than the children that do not suffer this problem. These difficulties act interfering the communication, both at expressive and comprehensive levels, making them be less efficient in the communication process. Nevertheless, the group presents a great variety: from subjects that have a normal language to subjects with language disorders. Nevertheless, the pragmatic difficulties seem to be present in almost all ADHD children. The atenttion difficulties can interfere the output of the information; the working memory makes them less efficient in the distribution and monitoring of the available resources and less efficient in the selection and management of the basic structures of language. Consequently, it is necessary to include, in the usual evaluation of the children with ADHD, a systematic exploration of the language for to determine difficulties, value risks and ADHD decide the intervention strategies.