The Future of Education

This study deals with the mapping of reading errors among children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with and without difficulties in the phonological processing as a function of the subtype of disorder and concentration. The study included 125 students from three elementary schools in the 5th – 6thgrade in two Arab rural villages in the north of Israel. Those students were divided into two groups ; 66 normal students and 59 ADHD students. Among ADHD students, there were 23 ADHD-PI (Attention Deficit Disorder) students, 18 ADHD-PHI students (hyperactivity and impulsivity) and 18-ADHD-C students (A mix of Attention Deficit Disorder and impulsivity). The students' parents answered DSM-5 questionnaire in order to set the criteria of the existence of ADHD. Besides, students were asked to take part in the Attention Test D2 which aimed at exploring ADHD in a behavioral aspect. Furthermore, different tests were also conducted, such as classifying into different groups and diagnosing phonological difficulties, RAN (Rapid Automatized Naming), Forward Digit Span Test and Backward Digit Test, Reading Tasks (deconstruction of phonemic words, Reading Words without dotted context), phonological processing tasks and reading that examined the type of reading errors. The study findings showed a significant difference in the phonological processing tasks among ADHD students with phonological problems compared to normal students. However, there was no meaningful difference in the phonological processing tasks for the subgroup of ADHD students. In addition, there was no significant difference in the reading errors of the different types between the subgroups of ADHD. The finding suggested a considerable difference, which stated that the number of reading errors was more common among ADHD students than among normal students, but there was no significant difference between ADHD subgroups in the general number of errors. The study showed no substantial difference in the reading errors of the different types between the subgroups of ADHD.However, the semi-phonetic reading errors were the most common, followed by phonetic, morphological, while semantic errors were not included because there was not enough variance. Another meaningful difference was found,  which states that the types of phonetic and dysphonic reading errors were more common among ADHD students with phonological processing problems than ADHD students without problems in phonological processing, but there was no significant difference between these two groups in morphological errors. Moreover, Semi phonetic reading errors were more common among ADHD students without problems in phonological processing than in normal students without problems in phonological processing. However, no significant difference was found between these two groups in both dysphonic and morphological errors. This study examined some aspects that are related to the reading difficulties experienced by ADHD students. In light of this, we noticed that the reading difficulties suffered by many students diagnosed with ADHD are inherent to the disorder and are not necessarily caused by comorbidities with dyslexia.