Behavioural and neuropsychological characteristics or children of both sexes, between 6 and 11 years of age, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Introduction. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) gives rise to behavioural and neuropsychological alterations. Aims. The purpose of this study is to compare the behavioural and neuropsychological skills of 6 to 11- years-old children of both sexes. who have been diagnosed with ADHD, with that of a control group. Subjects and methods. From a total of 1200 schoolchildren. whose parents and teachers answered a brief ADHD screening survey. we selected 112 participants who were then submitted to a psychological clinical interview and a neurological examination in order to assign them to one of three groups; combined-type ADHD, inattentive ADHD and a control group. Behaviour was assessed by applying a neuropsychological battery fro attention memory visuomotor and verbal skills and executive functions. Groups were compared by means of a Kruskal-Wallis non-parameric univariate analysis of variance. In the case of pairs of groups the Mann-Whitney U test was employed. Results. The behavioural scales showed greater alterations in the case agroups with more problems in the combined-type ADHD group. Neuropsychologially significantly lower performances were observed in the ADHD groups in sustaiend attention executive function semantic and phomological fulency tests. Conclusions. Behavioural disorders are the most apparent in ADHD. The neuropsychological alterations that were found were similar to those reported in other studies conducted in Colombia.