Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2012 Jul;40(5):657-68. doi: 10.1007/s10802-011-9599-y.
We prospectively followed an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of preadolescent girls with ADHD (n = 140) and matched comparison girls (n = 88) over a period of 10 years, from middle childhood through late adolescence/young adulthood. Our aim was to examine the ability of childhood measures of executive function (EF) to predict functional outcomes at follow-up. Measures of EF comprised the childhood predictors, with academic, socioemotional, occupational, and global functioning serving as young adult criterion measures. Results indicated that childhood EF - particularly measures of global EF and working memory - predicted academic and occupational functioning across our entire sample (independent of diagnostic group status), but diagnostic status (ADHD versus comparison) moderated the association between (a) working memory and reading achievement and (b) a global EF measure and suspensions/expulsions. That is, in the ADHD group, low working memory predicted poor reading scores and impaired global EF predicted higher suspensions/expulsions, but this was not the case in the comparison group. Overall, these results extend previous findings of associations between EF and adolescent outcomes in girls with and without ADHD into young adulthood. Findings continue to suggest the importance of assessing and developing interventions that target EF impairments early in life in order to prevent long-term difficulties across a range of important functional domains.
我们前瞻性地随访了一组具有 ADHD 的不同种族和社会经济背景的青春期前女孩（n=140）和匹配的对照组女孩（n=88），随访时间为 10 年，从儿童中期到青春期后期/成年早期。我们的目的是研究儿童期执行功能（EF）测量在随访时预测功能结果的能力。EF 测量包括儿童期预测因素，以学业、社会情感、职业和整体功能作为成年早期的标准测量。结果表明，儿童期 EF——特别是整体 EF 和工作记忆的测量——预测了整个样本的学业和职业功能（独立于诊断组状态），但诊断状态（ADHD 与对照组）调节了（a）工作记忆与阅读成绩和（b）整体 EF 测量与停学/开除之间的关联。也就是说，在 ADHD 组中，低工作记忆预测阅读成绩差，整体 EF 受损预测停学/开除率高，但在对照组中并非如此。总的来说，这些结果将 EF 与 ADHD 女孩和无 ADHD 女孩的青少年结果之间的关联的先前发现扩展到了成年早期。研究结果继续表明，重要的是要在生命早期评估和开发针对 EF 损伤的干预措施，以防止在一系列重要的功能领域出现长期困难。
