Narrative abilities in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal peers.

A story retelling task was used to assess narrative abilities in 30 boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 30 normally developing boys, matched on age and IQ. Each boy listened to two stories and retold them for another child. Results indicated that the two groups did not differ in their ability to comprehend and extract the main ideas from the stories, but did differ in the production of narratives. Boys with ADHD provided less information overall, and their stories were more poorly organized and less cohesive and contained more inaccuracies. As a result, their stories were often confused and hard to follow. Organization and monitoring of information are functions of executive control. Thus the observed deficits in narrative production in children with ADHD may reflect underlying deficits in executive processes.