The relation of story structure properties to recall of television storiesin young children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and nonreferred peers

In this study, the authors examined memory for televised stories to gain in sight into similarities and differences in story comprehension between youn g children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their t ypical peers. In particular, the authors investigated the extent to which 4 - to 6-year-old children's free recall of story events is predicted by seve ral structural properties of story events (number of causal connections, wh ether an event is on or off the story's causal chain, story-grammar categor y, and position in the story's hierarchical structure), whether differences exist between children with ADHD and nonreferred comparison children in th eir sensitivity to structural features of stories, and whether age differen ces in sensitivity to structural features are similar for both groups. For both groups, recall of story events was predicted by all four structural pr operties, but the effects of the two causal properties was stronger for com parison children than for children with ADHD. Further examination revealed that this difference was observed only when a competing activity was availa ble during television viewing. These findings indicate that both groups of preschool children are able to benefit from causal structure when recalling television stories, but that children with ADHD lose this benefit when att ention is divided. Consistent with previous findings for nonreferred childr en (P. W. van den Broek, E. P. Lorch, & R. Thurlow, 1996), in both diagnost ic groups the effects of causal properties increased across age, and older children were more likely to include causally important protagonists' goals in their recalls than younger children.