The Role of Planning in Reading Comprehension by Adolescents with ADHD: Evidence from Eye-Movements

Abstract

This study explored the manner in which poor planning skill impairs reading comprehension of students with ADHD. Ninety-six adolescents with and without ADHD completed a planning task (Tower of London) and answered open-ended questions following the reading of two expository texts under two reading goals—study and entertainment, while their eye-movements were recorded. Findings indicated lower performance for the participants with ADHD on the planning and reading comprehension tests. Moreover, controls exhibited longer and more frequent (re)readings of text ideas in the study than in the entertainment goal condition, whereas readers with ADHD showed similar reading patterns for both reading goals. Critically, the difference observed between the groups on the reading comprehension test was mediated by the difference observed in their planning performance and goal-based reading patterns. Findings suggest that students with ADHD experience difficulties in reading comprehension due to poor planning of their text processing, as appropriate for different reading goals.

Notes

1 Domain-general planning refers to a planning ability that was assessed by a visual, non-verbal task, so that its function would not be specific to reading, but rather general.

2 A text unit was parsed by a comma only if at least three words preceded that comma. We applied this criterion to avoid the formation of short, partial text units in parsing a list description.

3 Including the first-pass reading duration measurement slightly attenuated the fit level of our model (χ²(41 = 7.17, p = .127, RMSEA = 0.09, = .00, TLI = 1.00, NFI = 0.99), because, as expected, this measurement was not found to be a significant mediator (standardized regression weights were 0.06 with planning score and 0.35 with RC score, ps > 0.22). However, its addition to the model did not change the significance of all other mediators (see final model below).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) under [Grant no. 1692/19].