Is there a relation between visual motor integration and academic achievement in school-aged children with and without ADHD?

ABSTRACT

Visual-motor integration, motor coordination, and visual perception are associated with academic achievement in early school-aged children; however, our understanding of these associations in older school-aged children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders is limited. A well-characterized, clinically evaluated sample of 39 children with and without ADHD ages 8–13 (M = 10.07, SD = 1.56; 14 girls; 67.5% White/non-Hispanic) were administered standardized academic and visual-motor integration tests. Results: Backward entry regression analyses that initially included age, sex, socioeconomic status, ADHD symptoms, comorbidities, and IQ revealed that better visual perception uniquely predicted better-developed reading (β = .38) and math skills (β = .21; both p < .03), whereas better motor coordination was associated with better reading (β = .25), writing (β = .50), and math skills (β = .21 all p < .05). The integration of visual perception and motor coordination processes was uniquely associated only with math skills (β = .28; p = .007). Children with ADHD exhibited significantly lower visual-motor integration (d = 1.16) and potentially motor coordination (d = 0.51), but did not differ from Non-ADHD children in terms of visual perception (d = 0.03). These findings extend prior evidence from younger, neurotypical samples, and indicate that underdeveloped visual-motor integration and/or its subcomponents (visual perception and motor coordination) reflect unique risk factors for academic underachievement in school-aged children’s math, reading, and written language skills.

KEYWORDS:

• ADHD
• visual-motor integration
• motor coordination
• visual perception
• academic achievement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ As recommended in the K-SADS, oppositional defiant disorder was diagnosed clinically only with evidence of multi-informant/multi-setting symptoms.

² Exploratory analyses added during the peer review process indicated that medication status was not significantly associated with any of the study’s visual-motor or academic outcomes (Table 2, all p > .11), that medicated and unmedicated children with ADHD did not differ significantly on any of the study’s visual-motor or academic outcomes (all p > .10), and that medication status did not significantly predict any of the academic outcomes (all p > .36) or change the pattern of significant predictors when added to the regression models.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by an NIH grant (R34 MH102499-01, PI: Kofler). The sponsor had no role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.