Performance of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -combined subtype on the Stanford -Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition

The psychopathology of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) consists of the behavioural symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness, is well recognized in children and adolescents, and is reported as one of the most frequently seen problems in child psychology and psychiatry. Although there has been concern about the utility of IQ tests in helping to diagnose ADHD, the ability of psychometric tests to provide information properties on a variety of constructs is thought to provide useful clinical information about the higher cortical functions in children with ADHD. The development and release of the of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (SB5) presents an opportunity to examine the nature of intellectual functioning, via examination of profile patterns, in special populations. This study compared the profile patterns of children with ADHD-Combined subtype (ADHD-C) and normal Controls, on the SB5. This study employed an ex post facto design, comparing the archival data of 29 participants with ADHD-C to 50 participants in the Control group. The Full Scale IQs for the ADHD-C and Control groups were analyzed and compared using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure. The Verbal and Nonverbal IQs, and factor scores of the two groups were analyzed and compared using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Further stepwise discriminant function analysis was used to examine if group membership could be predicted based on the SB5 scores. The results of this study indicate that children with ADHD-C and children in the Control group do not differ significantly on the Full Scale IQ, Nonverbal IQ, or Verbal IQ. When examining the five factor indexes it was observed that the two groups do differ significantly on the Working Memory factor. Further examination of Working Memory at the subtest level found that children with ADHD-C displayed significantly lower performance on the Nonverbal Working Memory subtest but not on the Verbal Working Memory subtest scores when compared to their Control group counterparts. A secondary analysis employing stepwise discriminant function analysis indicated that the two groups, in this study, could be differentiated from each other with 82.3% accuracy base on the subtests scores obtained on Working Memory.