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Two experiments compared closely related interventions to teach the control of variables strategy (CVS) to fourth-grade students. Over the two experiments, an intervention first developed by Chen and Klahr (1999) was most effective at helping students learn how to design and evaluate single-factor experiments. In Experiment 1, attempts to reduce the cognitive load imposed by Chen and Klahr’s basic teaching intervention actually produced poorer learning and transfer of CVS. In Experiment 2, attempts to simplify Chen and Klahr’s algorithm for teaching students how to set up a valid experimental design also produced poorer learning and transfer of CVS. Both experiments illustrate that oversimplifying a domain or the logic behind controlling variables can undermine the effectiveness of an intervention designed to teach CVS

Mediante dos experimentos se compararon intervenciones estrechamente relacionadas con el objetivo de enseñar el control de estrategia de variables (CVS) a estudiantes de cuarto grado. Durante los dos experimentos, una intervención desarrollada primero por Chen y Klahr (1999) fue más eficaz para ayudar a los estudiantes a aprender a diseñar y evaluar experimentos de un solo factor. En el experimento 1, los intentos de reducir la carga cognitiva impuesta por la intervención básica de enseñanza de Chen y Klahr produjeron un aprendizaje y transferencia de CVS peores. En el experimento 2, los intentos de simplificar el algoritmo de Chen y Klahr para enseñar a los estudiantes cómo establecer un diseño experimental válido también produjeron un aprendizaje y transferencia de CVS peores. Ambos experimentos ilustran que simplificar excesivamente un dominio o la lógica que subyace en el control de variables puede socavar la eficacia de una intervención diseñada para enseñar CVS

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The goals of this study were to (a) evaluate the presence of the positive bias (PB) in elementary-school-aged children with and without ADHD when PB is defined at the individual level through latent profile analysis and (b) examine the extent to which several correlates (i.e., social functioning, aggression, depression, and anxiety) are associated with the PB. Participants were 233 youth (30% female; 8 to 10 years of age), 51% of whom met criteria for ADHD. During an individual evaluation, children and parents completed a battery of questionnaires to assess child competence, depression, anxiety, and aggression. Children also participated in a novel group session with same-sex unfamiliar peers (half of the group was comprised of children with ADHD) to engage in group problem-solving tasks and free play activities. After the group session, peers and staff completed ratings of each child's behavior (e.g., likeability, rule following). The best fitting LPA model for parent and self-ratings of competence revealed four profiles: High Competence/Self-Aware; Variable Competence/Self-Aware; Low Competence/Self-Aware; and Low Competence/PB, in which the PB was present across domains. Only 10% of youth showed a PB and youth with ADHD were no more likely to display the PB than their non-ADHD peers with similar levels of low competence. Lastly, the Low Competence/Self-Aware profile demonstrated higher levels of anxiety and depression than the Low Competence/PB profile; the profiles did not differ on aggression or peer or staff ratings of social/behavioral functioning. Implications for understanding the PB in children with and without ADHD are discussed.

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BACKGROUND: Previous research on peer status of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has focused on already-established peer groups, rendering the specific social behaviors that influence peers' initial impressions largely unknown. Recently, theorists have argued that emotion dysregulation is a key aspect of ADHD, with empirical work finding relations between emotion dysregulation and social outcomes. Therefore, the current study focuses on the initial interactions among children varying in ADHD symptoms duringh a novel playgroup, proposing that emotion dysregulation displayed during the playgroup may serve as a possible pathway between ADHD symptoms and peers' initial negative impressions. METHODS: Participants were 233 elementary-age children ranging from 8 to 10 years old (M = 8.83, 70% male). Parents and teachers rated children's ADHD symptoms and related impairment; 51% of the children met criteria for an ADHD diagnosis. Then, children participated with unfamiliar peers in a three-hour playgroup that included three structured and two unstructured tasks. After the tasks, children and staff rated each child on social outcomes. Coders unaware of child's diagnostic status watched videos of the groups and rated each child's global emotion dysregulation during each task. RESULTS: Using multiple raters and methods, ADHD severity was associated with more negative peer ratings, through observed emotion dysregulation. Results were consistent for both parent and teacher ratings of ADHD severity as well as for both peer ratings of likeability and staff ratings of perceived peer likeability. CONCLUSIONS: When focusing on improving peers' initial impressions of children with ADHD symptoms, emotion dysregulation may be a valuable target for intervention.

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Academic difficulties are well-documented among children with ADHD. Exploring these difficulties through story comprehension research has revealed deficits among children with ADHD in making causal connections between events and in using causal structure and thematic importance to guide recall of stories. Important to theories of story comprehension and implied in these deficits is the ability to make inferences. Often, characters' goals are implicit and explanations of events must be inferred. The purpose of the present study was to compare the inferences generated during story comprehension by 23 7- to 11-year-old children with ADHD (16 males) and 35 comparison peers (19 males). Children watched two televised stories, each paused at five points. In the experimental condition, at each pause children told what they were thinking about the story, whereas in the control condition no responses were made during pauses. After viewing, children recalled the story. Several types of inferences and inference plausibility were coded. Children with ADHD generated fewer of the most essential inferences, plausible explanatory inferences, than did comparison children, both during story processing and during story recall. The groups did not differ on production of other types of inferences. Group differences in generating inferences during the think-aloud task significantly mediated group differences in patterns of recall. Both groups recalled more of the most important story information after completing the think-aloud task. Generating fewer explanatory inferences has important implications for story comprehension deficits in children with ADHD.

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The current study examined the effects of an 8-week Story Mapping Intervention (SMI) to improve narrative comprehension in adolescents with ADHD. Thirty 12 - 16 year-old adolescents with ADHD who were participating in a summer treatment program for adolescents with ADHD received the SMI instruction ten times and completed SMI homework ten times in a structured environment with teacher feedback. Recall of fables and story creation were assessed before and after the SMI. At post-test, fable recalls included more of the most important events, were more coherent, and included a greater number of plausible inferences than pre-test fable recalls. SMI homework scores accounted for increases in recall of important events and plausible inferences, suggesting that consistent practice and feedback with story mapping could contribute to important recall gains. In contrast, the inclusion of goal-based events and the rated coherence of created stories did not improve, suggesting that more explicit instruction in applying story mapping to story creation may be required.

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PURPOSE: In the present study, the authors explored whether pragmatic language use was associated with, and perhaps accounted for, the social skills problems that children with varying levels of hyperactivity and inattention experience. METHOD: A community sample of 54 children aged 9-11 years participated. Pragmatic language use, hyperactivity and inattention, and social skills were examined utilizing data collected from standardized parent-report rating scales. RESULTS: Pragmatic language use fully mediated the relation between hyperactivity and social skills problems and partially mediated the relation between inattention and social skills problems. Further, pragmatic language use provided a unique contribution in the estimate of children's social skills of 21.6% above and beyond the contribution of hyperactivity and 17.2% above and beyond the contribution of inattention. CONCLUSIONS: Possible explanations for these mediation results are discussed in terms of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the problems that they experience with social relations.

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This study investigated developmental differences in story recall in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), N = 57 (77.2% male) and their comparison peers, N = 98 (61.2% male). Children at the ages of 4-6 or 7-9 completed a free recall immediately after viewing each of two televised stories, once in the presence of toys during viewing and once in their absence. This procedure was repeated with new stories 21 months later. Comparison children recalled more story events and showed a greater sensitivity to the thematic importance of the story events than did children with ADHD, a pattern that remained stable over time. Older comparison children showed a dramatic increase over time in the global coherence of their narrations, whereas the older children with ADHD showed limited improvement over time. The implications of these findings for academic performance and the possible need for remediation are discussed.

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OBJECTIVE: The present study examines the ability of children with ADHD to make inferences and monitor ongoing understanding of texts, to shed light on their academic difficulties. METHOD: A total of 29 boys with ADHD and 41 comparison boys between the ages of 7 and 12 participated. Three tasks measure how boys create and evaluate inferences, particularly explanatory inferences, and how they monitor their understanding of story events and the connections among them. RESULTS: Boys with ADHD are less able than their comparison peers to make appropriate inferences, particularly explanatory inferences. They also have more trouble identifying text inconsistencies. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that difficulties in making inferences and monitoring ongoing comprehension among children with ADHD may contribute to story comprehension problems and in turn to academic difficulties experienced by these children. Interventions specifically focusing on understanding causal connections, creating inferences, and monitoring ongoing understanding of stories need to be investigated.

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Changes in visual attention and story comprehension for children (N = 132) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison peers were examined. Between the ages of 7 and 9 (Phase 1) and approximately 21 months later (Phase 2), children viewed 2 televised stories: 1 in the presence of toys and 1 in their absence. Both groups of children showed developmental increases in visual attention and stable group differences over time. Deficits in comprehension among children with ADHD, however, increased over time. Whereas comparison children's recall of factual and causal information increased over time in both viewing conditions, children with ADHD showed no developmental improvement in recall of factual information in the toys-present condition and no improvement in recall of causal relations in either viewing condition.

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Application of theoretically based tasks to the study of the development of selective attention has led to intriguing new findings concerning the role of inhibitory mechanisms. This study examined inhibitory mechanisms using a countermanding task and an inhibition of return task to compare deficits in intentionally, versus reflexively, controlled inhibition of attention in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Fifty children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were classified into one of three subtypes: predominantly inattentive (ADHD/PI), combined (ADHD/C), and those children with ADHD/C who also met criteria for comorbid oppositional defiant disorder (ADHD/C + ODD). The groups were compared to a comparison group of children (n = 21). The countermanding task showed that the ADHD groups required more time to inhibit responses and this impairment did not differ among subtypes. With respect to reflexively controlled inhibition, compared with controls ADHD/C and ADHD/C + ODD groups showed impaired reflexive inhibition, whereas the ADHD/PI group was considerably less impaired. The findings highlight a dissociation between the two forms of inhibitory deficits among children with the inattentive subtype, and raise the possibility that the efficient operation of reflexive inhibitory mechanisms might be necessary for the development of effective intentional control of inhibition.

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OBJECTIVE: Children with AD/HD exhibit two disparate areas of difficulty: disrupted interactions with parents and significant problems in story comprehension. This study links these two difficulties by examining parent-child joint picture-book reading to determine whether there were diagnostic group differences in parent and child storytelling. METHOD: Parents of 25 children with ADHD and 39 comparison children (mean age = 7.5 years) told their children a story based on a wordless picture-book, and children then retold the story to an examiner from memory. RESULTS: Parents in both groups told stories of similar length and complexity and demonstrated similar affective and responsive quality. The length of the child's retell of the parent's story did not differ across groups but children with ADHD included fewer goal-based events. CONCLUSIONS: RESULTS are discussed in terms of implications for enhancing the quality and frequency of parent-child storytelling among children with ADHD.

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This study examined potential differences between the inattentive and combined ADHD subtypes using laboratory tasks assessing behavioral inhibitory processes. Seventy-five children completed two tasks of behavioral inhibition believed to isolate different processes: the cued reaction time task (CRT), a basic inhibition task, and the go/no-go task (GNG), a complex inhibition task that incorporates motivational contingencies. Three groups of participants were identified, including ADHD/Inattentive (n = 17), ADHD/Combined (n = 37), and comparison (n = 21). Results indicated that rather than showing behavioral inhibition deficits, the ADHD/I children appeared overly inhibited, as evidenced by slower reaction times across the two tasks and significantly higher errors of omission in the GNG task. Additionally, the ADHD/I children did not demonstrate cue dependency effects on the CRT task, suggesting that they were failing to incorporate relevant information before making a response. The sluggish and inhibited performance of the ADHD/I group challenges the idea that it is a subtype of ADHD.

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OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the effects of the Marijuana Initiative portion of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign on high-sensation-seeking and low-sensation-seeking adolescents. METHODS: Personal interviews were conducted via laptop computers with independent monthly random samples of 100 youths from the same age cohort in each of 2 moderate-sized communities over 48 months (April 1999-March 2003) of the campaign, including the critical first 6 months of the 9-month initiative. The start of the initiative was treated as an "interruption" in time-series analyses of the combined community sample. RESULTS: The Marijuana Initiative reversed upward developmental trends in 30-day marijuana use among high-sensation-seeking adolescents (P<.001) and significantly reduced positive marijuana attitudes and beliefs in this at-risk population. Use of control substances was not affected. As expected, low-sensation-seeking adolescents had low marijuana-use levels, and the campaign had no detectable effects on them. Other analyses indicated that the initiative's dramatic depiction of negative consequences of marijuana use was principally responsible for its effects on high-sensation-seeking youths. CONCLUSIONS: Substance use prevention campaigns can be effective within an approach using dramatic negative-consequence messages targeted to high-sensation seekers.

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This study examined the recall of televised stories for younger (4-6 years) and older (7-9 years) children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) under two different viewing conditions (toys present/toys absent). Each child watched two Rugrats television programs, once with toys present and once with toys absent. Immediately after viewing a program, the child completed a free recall of the observed story. Comparison children's recall increased more than ADHD children's as importance level increased, and comparison children recalled more information overall than children with ADHD. When toys were present, children with ADHD retold less coherent stories than comparison children, as indexed by smaller correlations between the story units recalled and the order of these units in the story. In summary, children with ADHD demonstrated multiple difficulties in story comprehension. These findings add to our understanding of the differences in higher-order cognitive processing abilities between children with ADHD and comparison children, and suggest important areas of focus in designing more effective academic interventions for children with ADHD.

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The present study examined children's cognitive engagement with television as a function of the continuity of central or incidental content and whether this varied with age and clinical status. In Experiment 1, 9- to 11-year-old children's response times on a secondary task were slower the later a probe occurred in a sequence of central events, and response times predicted recall. Experiment 2 extended these results to 6- to 8-year-old children. Experiment 3 revealed that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) failed to show the pattern consistently observed for comparison children. The results support the hypothesis that typically developing children build a representation during viewing that reflects the causal structure of the televised story but that this skill is deficient in 4- to 9-year-old children with ADHD.

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Children with ADHD have difficulty understanding causal connections and goal plans within stories. This study examined mediators of group differences in story narrations between children ages 7-9 with and without ADHD, including as potential mediators both the core deficits of ADHD (i.e., inattention, disinhibition, planning/working memory) as well measures of phonological processing and verbal skills. Forty-nine children with ADHD and 67 non-referred children narrated a wordless book and completed tasks assessing the core deficits of ADHD, phonological processing, and verbal skills. Results revealed that, although no shorter than those of non-referred children, the narratives of children with ADHD contained fewer elements relating to the story's causal structure and goal plan. Deficits in sustained attention accounted for the most variance in these differences. Results have implications for understanding and ameliorating the academic problems experienced by children with ADHD.

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This study examined the impact of studying on story comprehension and recall among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants in the study were 36 children with ADHD and 43 nonreferred comparison children ages 7 to 11. The participants listened to 1 of 2 folktales and recalled the story both before and after studying a written version of the story for up to 10 min. The stories had been divided into individual events, and each event was coded for the number of causal connections it had to other story events. Each event was presented on a separate page of the study booklet so that time spent on each event could be recorded. All of the transcribed recalls were coded for which story events the participant correctly recalled. For both groups, recall increased as the number of causal connections increased, but the effect of the number of causal connections on recall was stronger for comparison children than for children with ADHD. The results revealed no group differences in studying behavior. However, when recall before studying was included as a predictor of recall after studying, studying was found to be more effective for higher IQ comparison children than for higher IQ children with ADHD, especially at the highest levels of causal connections. The results offer important leads for the development of academic interventions that are specific to the story-comprehension deficits of children with ADHD.

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