NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL MEASURES WHICH DISCRIMINATE AMONG ADULTS WITH RESIDUAL SYMPTOMS OF ATTENTION-DEFICIT DISORDER AND OTHER ATTENTIONAL COMPLAINTS

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in children is accompanied by quantif iable-deficits on attentional, learning, and memory indices. Symptoms of childhood ADD persist into adulthood in many cases. However, many a dults without, a history of childhood ADD also complain of difficultie s with attention, presumably due to other etiologies than developmenta l ADD. This study investigated whether performance on neuropsychologic al measures of attention and memory could differentiate adults with at tentional complaints and history of childhood ADD from those without c hildhood ADD. Adults with a history of childhood ADD demonstrated redu ced scores on the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task and Delayed Free Recall on the California Verbal Learning Test as well as on a verbal fluency task relative to adults who denied attentional problems in chi ldhood. Discriminant function analysis using verbal fluency, performan ce on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, verbal learning and recall, Dig it Span Backward, and performance on the Paced Auditory Serial Additio n Task as predictors correctly classified adults with and without a hi story of childhood ADD into diagnostic groups tn with 75% accuracy.