Publications by authors named "Michael J Kofler"

Objective: Hyperactivity is a core and impairing deficit in the clinical model of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the extent to which hyperactivity in ADHD is evoked by cognitively challenging tasks in general or by demands on specific executive functions remains unclear.

Method: A clinically evaluated and carefully phenotyped community-referred sample of 184 children ages 8-13 (M = 10.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Executive function deficits have been reported in both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, little is known regarding which, if any, of these impairments are unique vs. shared in children with ADHD versus ASD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • ADHD is a common, long-lasting mental health disorder in children, and while there are established evidence-based interventions, their efficacy and effectiveness can still be improved.
  • * The text discusses various evidence-based interventions for children and adolescents with ADHD and suggests ways to enhance these approaches.
  • * Recommendations include addressing moderators, exploring under-researched intervention areas, and improving access by utilizing underutilized workforce and technology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience a host of social problems, in addition to significant impairments in behavioral inhibition, working memory, and self-control. Behavioral inhibition and working memory difficulties have been linked with social functioning deficits, but to date, most studies have examined these neurocognitive problems either in isolation or as an aggregate measure in relation to social problems, and none has considered the role of self-control. Thus, it remains unclear whether all of these executive functions are linked with social problems or if the link can be more parsimoniously explained by construct overlap.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Growing evidence suggests that childhood ADHD is associated with larger impairments in working memory relative to inhibition. However, most studies have not considered the role of co-occurring anxiety on these estimates - a potentially significant confound given prior evidence that anxiety may increase working memory difficulties but decrease inhibition difficulties for these children. The current study extends prior work to examine the extent to which co-occurring anxiety may be systematically affecting recent estimates of the magnitude of working memory/inhibitory control deficits in ADHD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Understanding factors that promote resilience in pediatric ADHD is important though highly understudied.

Aims: The current study sought to provide a preliminary 'shortlist' of key individual, family, and social-community assets among children with ADHD.

Methods And Procedures: The study included well-characterized, clinically-evaluated samples of children with (n=108) and without ADHD (n=98) ages 8-13 years (M=10.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and an evening chronotype are both common among college students, and there is growing interest in understanding the possible link between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and circadian function. However, mixed findings have been reported, and many of the existing studies have used small samples that were unable to examine chronotype across attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder presentations. Participants were 4751 students (73% female; 80% White), aged 18-29 years (M = 19.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS), previously termed sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), is characterized by excessive daydreaming, mental confusion, and slowed behavior or thinking. Prior research has found inconsistent relations between CDS and neurocognition, though most studies have used small or ADHD-defined samples, non-optimal measures of CDS, and/or examined limited neurocognitive domains. Accordingly, this study examined the association of parent- and teacher-reported CDS symptoms using a comprehensive neurocognitive battery in a sample of 263 children (aged 8-12) selected with a range of CDS symptomatology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Two event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited following errors, the (ERN) and (Pe), have been proposed to reflect cognitive control, though the specific processes remain debated. Few studies have examined the ERN and Pe's relations with individual differences in cognitive control/executive functioning using well-validated tests administered separately from the inhibition tasks used to elicit the ERN/Pe. Additionally, neurocognitive tests of executive functions tend to strongly predict ADHD symptoms, but the extent to which task-based and EEG-based estimates of executive functioning/cognitive control account for the same variance in ADHD symptoms remains unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Approximately 48-54% of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have impairing difficulties with emotion regulation, and these difficulties are not ameliorated by first-line ADHD treatments. Working memory and inhibitory control represent promising intervention targets given their functional, if not causal, links with ADHD-related emotion dysregulation.

Methods: This preregistered randomized controlled trial tested whether two digital therapeutic training protocols that have been previously shown to improve working memory (Central Executive Training [CET]) and inhibitory control (Inhibitory Control Training [ICT]) can improve emotion regulation in a sample of 94 children with ADHD aged 8-13 years ( = 10.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience social impairments. These children also frequently struggle with emotion regulation, and extant literature suggests that emotion dysregulation predicts social impairment in both clinical and neurotypical populations. However, the evidence base linking ADHD/ASD with social impairment comes primarily from samples meeting full diagnostic criteria for ADHD and/or ASD despite evidence that both syndromes reflect extreme ends of natural continuums that are normally distributed across the general population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Approximately 50% of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop comorbid social anxiety disorder, and this comorbidity predicts poorer treatment outcomes than either syndrome alone. ASD and social anxiety are both associated with reduced social competence as evidenced by difficulties implementing fundamental social skills for successful social interactions, but it remains unclear whether reduced social competence reflects a mechanism that explains the increased risk for social anxiety associated with elevated autism spectrum symptoms.

Design/methods: To address this gap in the literature, the current study combined multi-informant measures (child, parent and teacher report) with a sample of 194 children with and without psychiatric disorders (ages 8-13; 68 girls; 69% White/Non-Hispanic).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dangerous driving accounts for 95% of driving fatalities among emerging adults. Emerging adult drivers exhibiting symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are at greater risk for motor vehicle crashes and engaging in unsafe driving practices; however, not all individuals with ADHD symptoms exhibit such risk. Several studies have found that drivers' perceptions of their family's values and priorities related to driving practices predict driving outcomes among emerging adults; these factors have not been examined in the context of ADHD symptomology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pediatric ADHD is associated with parent-child relationship difficulties. However, the extent to which these relations are attributable to specific ADHD symptom clusters (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Our understanding of the role of parental involvement in academic outcomes for children with ADHD is limited, with mixed evidence suggesting a positive association between parental involvement and academic achievement for pediatric ADHD but limited evidence regarding how this varies based on ADHD symptom severity, ADHD symptom domains, or co-occurring ODD symptoms. In this context, the present study aimed to examine the effects of parental involvement, ADHD symptoms, and comorbid ODD on children's overall, reading, and math achievement.

Method: A well-characterized clinically-evaluated sample of 162 children recruited through a university-based children's learning/behavioral health clinic and community resources (ages 8-13; 50 girls; 69% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic) were administered standardized academic achievement tests, with parents and teachers completing measures of parental involvement and ADHD symptoms, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Difficulties with emotion regulation affect the majority of youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and predict greater functional impairment than ADHD symptoms alone. Deficits in executive functioning are also present for most children with ADHD, and have been linked with emotion regulation difficulties in both clinical and neurotypical populations throughout development. The current study was the first to assess all three core executive functions (working memory, inhibitory control, set shifting) simultaneously in a clinically-diverse sample of children with and without ADHD and common comorbidities and investigate the extent to which they uniquely predict emotion dysregulation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Pediatric attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with impairments in executive functioning and academic writing skills. However, our understanding of the extent to which these children's writing difficulties are related to their underdeveloped executive functions-and whether this relation is attributable to specific executive functions-is limited.

Method: A clinically-evaluated and carefully-phenotyped sample of 91 children ages 8-13 (M = 10.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessiongh9255o6k0s5os46a865l46etjh6bfkj): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once