ABSTRACT
Purpose:
to characterize and compare the performance of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in metalinguistic skills, reading and reading comprehension in students with good academic performance.
Methods:
30 participants from primary schools, of both genders, aged from 8 to 12 years and 11 months, divided into two groups: Group I consisted of 15 students diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Group II composed of 15 students with good academic performance. The students were matched byage, grade level and gender. The students were submitted to Metalinguistic Skills Tests, Reading Protocol and Reading Comprehension Tests.
Results:
differences were found between Group I and Group II for skills regarding initial and final phonemic identification, syllable and phonemes subtraction and addition, as well as phonemic segmentation. The performance of Group I was also inferior than that of Group II, in Reading protocol and repetition of non-words. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in reading comprehension performance.
Conclusion:
students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder presented inferior performance in relation to reading protocol and in more complex metalinguistic skills, which required retention, analysis and information retrieval, when compared to the control group. In regard to reading comprehension, both groups presented lower performance, with similar results.
Keywords:
Learning; Reading; Evaluation; Education; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder