Abstract
ADHD is a psychiatric disorder characterised by persistent and developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. It is known that children with ADHD tend to produce incoherent discourses, e.g. by narrating events out of sequence. Here the aetiology of ADHD becomes of interest. One prominent theory is that ADHD is an executive function disorder, showing deficiencies of planning. Given the close link between planning, verb tense and discourse coherence postulated in van Lambalgen and Hamm (The proper treatment of events, 2004), we predicted specific deviations in the verb tenses produced by children with ADHD. Here we report on an experiment corroborating these predictions.
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This article is based on the theoretical analysis of executive function given by Stenning and van Lambalgen (2007). The analysis of the narratives of the children with ADHD is due to the second and third authors. The application to tense processing owes much to conversations with Giosue Baggio
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van Lambalgen, M., van Kruistum, C. & Parigger, E. Discourse Processing in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). J of Log Lang and Inf 17, 467–487 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-008-9066-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-008-9066-5