Vineland-II adaptive behavior profile of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or specific learning disorders.

BACKGROUND: The evaluation of adaptive behavior is informative in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or specific learning disorders (SLD). However, the few investigations available have focused only on the gross level of domains of adaptive behavior.

AIMS: To investigate which item subsets of the Vineland-II can discriminate children with ADHD or SLD from peers with typical development.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Student's t-tests, ROC analysis, logistic regression, and linear discriminant function analysis were used to compare 24 children with ADHD, 61 elementary students with SLD, and controls matched on age, sex, school level attended, and both parents' education level.

RESULTS: Several item subsets that address not only ADHD core symptoms, but also understanding in social context and development of interpersonal relationships, allowed discrimination of children with ADHD from controls. The combination of four item subsets (Listening and attending, Expressing complex ideas, Social communication, and Following instructions) classified children with ADHD with both sensitivity and specificity of 87.5%. Only Reading skills, Writing skills, and Time and dates discriminated children with SLD from controls.

CONCLUSIONS: Evaluation of Vineland-II scores at the level of item content categories is a useful procedure for an efficient clinical description.