Publications by authors named "Alissa M Cole"

Objective: Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) demonstrate deficits across academic domains including underachievement in math. Proposed models of math skill development suggest that math difficulties may be associated with both neurocognitive (e.g.

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Objective: Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit difficulties with organizational skills such as task planning, managing materials, and organizing activities that have downstream consequences on academic functioning. At the same time, deficits in working memory have been linked with both the organizational skills difficulties and academic underachievement and underperformance observed in children with ADHD and have been hypothesized to account for the link between organizational and academic functioning. However, the extent to which working memory and organizational skills independently versus jointly contribute to ADHD-related academic difficulties remains unclear.

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Introduction: Children with ADHD demonstrate difficulties on many different neuropsychological tests. However, it remains unclear whether this pattern reflects a large number of distinct deficits or a small number of deficit(s) that broadly impact test performance. The current study is among the first experiments to systematically manipulate demands on both working memory and inhibition, with implications for competing conceptual models of ADHD pathogenesis.

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Objective: Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) frequently demonstrate deficits in working memory and in multiple domains of math skills, including underdeveloped problem-solving and computation skills. The Baddeley model of working memory posits a multicomponent system, including a domain-general central executive and two domain-specific subsystems-phonological short-term memory and visuospatial short-term memory. Extant literature indicates a strong link between neurocognitive deficits in working/short-term memory and math skills; however, the extent to which each component of working/short-term memory may account for this relation is unclear.

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The 'simple view of reading' is an influential model of reading comprehension which asserts that children's reading comprehension performance can be explained entirely by their decoding and language comprehension skills. Children with ADHD often exhibit difficulty across all three of these reading domains on standardized achievement tests, yet it is unclear whether the simple view of reading is sufficient to explain reading comprehension performance for these children. The current study was the first to use multiple indicators and latent estimates to examine the veracity of key predictions from the simple view of reading in a clinically-evaluated sample of 250 children with and without ADHD (ages 8-13, M=10.

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Objective: The current randomized controlled trial (RCT) was the first to examine the benefits of central executive training (CET, which trains the components of working memory [WM]) for reducing organizational skills difficulties relative to a carefully matched neurocognitive training intervention (inhibitory control training [ICT]).

Method: A carefully phenotyped sample of 73 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity-impulsivity disorder (ADHD; ages 8-13, = 10.15, = 1.

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Children with ADHD show impairments in set shifting task performance. However, the limited available evidence suggests that directly training shifting may not improve shifting performance in this population. We hypothesized that this incongruence may be because impairments exhibited by children with ADHD during shifting tasks are due to deficits in other executive functions, as shifting tasks also engage children's working memory and/or inhibitory control abilities.

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Objective: Utilizing a multi-level meta-analytic approach, this review is the first to systematically quantify the efficacy of reading interventions for school-aged children with ADHD and identify potential factors that may increase the success of reading-related interventions for these children.

Method: 18 studies (15 peer-reviewed articles, 3 dissertations) published from 1986 to 2020 ( = 564) were meta-analyzed.

Results: Findings revealed reading interventions are highly effective for improving reading skills based on both study-developed/curriculum-based measures ( = 1.

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Objective: Central executive training (CET) is a "Level 2" evidence-based treatment for improving ADHD-related executive dysfunction and behavioral symptoms, but the extent to which these gains extend to the disorder's well-documented academic difficulties is unknown.

Method: Across two clinical trials, 108 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 8-13 years old ( = 10.29, = 1.

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