Using Repeated-Measures Data to Make Stronger Tests of the Association between Executive Function Skills and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptomatology in Early Childhood.

Using Repeated-Measures Data to Make Stronger Tests of the Association between Executive Function Skills and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptomatology in Early Childhood. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2019 May 14;: Authors: Willoughby MT, Wylie AC, Blair CB Abstract Theoretical models of Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have long implicated executive function (EF) skills as contributing to the etiology, maintenance, and changes in ADHD symptomatology over time. Although there is interest making within-person inferences (i.e., deficits in EF skills give rise to ADHD behaviors), most of the evidence has been derived from studies that conflated between- and within-person sources of variance. Here, we use repeated-measures data to test within-person association between EF skills and ADHD behaviors. Participants included 1160 children from the Family Life Project, an ongoing prospective longitudinal study of child development in low-income, nonmetropolitan communities. We tested the magnitude of the association between EF skills and ADHD behaviors when children were 3, 4, and 5 years old. Consistent with meta-analyses, unadjusted bivariate associations between EF and ADHD (which reflect combined between- and within-person variation) were of moderate magnitude (rs = -0.20 to -0.30). However, after controlling for all time-invariant, between-person sources of variation, the within-person associations between EF s...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research