The Comparison of Divided, Sustained and Selective Attention in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Children with Specific Learning Disorder and Normal Children

Background: High incidence of learning disorders has caught the psychologists’ attention in recent years.Objectives: The objective of this study was to compare divided, sustained and selective attention in children with attention deficithyperactivity disorder, children with a specific learning disorder and normal children.Methods: The study was a descriptive, causal-comparative and fundamental research. The population consisted of all children withattention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and children with specific learning psychology (SLD), aged 7 to 12 years old, whoreferred to counselingandpsychiatric clinics in Tehran in 2016, as well asnormalprimary school children. 36 children with attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder and 47 children with specific learning difficulties were selected through convenience sampling, and43 ordinary primary school children with cluster-randomly sampling method. Continuous performance test, word color Strooptest and theWechsler scales were used as the instruments of the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics along with multivariateanalysis of variance in Spss-21were used to analyze data.Results: The results of this study showed that weakness in divided, selective and sustained attention in children with attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder and children with specific learning disorder is more than normal children (P < 0.05). However, therewas no significant difference between these variables in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and children withspecific learning disorder (P < 0.01).Conclusions: The results showed that the rate of comorbidity was very high in children with attention deficit - hyperactivity disorderand children with specific learning disorder.

Keywords:

Attention , Children , Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder , Specific Learning Disorder