This chapter aimed to characterize the performance of students with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to compare that with the performance of
students with good academic performance on the reading assessment processes. Methods:
Forty students took part in this study. Their ages ranged from 8:2 years old to 10:11 years
old, and they belonged to both genders. These students attended from 1st to 4th grades of
elementary school. They were divided into two groups: GI - 20 students with
interdisciplinary diagnosis of ADHD, and GII - 20 students with good academic
performance, paired up with GI according to gender, age and school level. The students
were submitted to the application of a Brazilian adaptation of the assessment of the reading
processes – PROLEC, composed of four blocks: identification of letters, lexical, syntactic
and semantic processes. Results: a statistically significant difference was found between GI
and GII in the Prolec tests, with the exception of the same-different and lexical-decision
tests, indicating that the students of GI presented lower performance when compared with
students of GII. Regarding the classification of the results of Prolec, there was a statistically
significant difference in the lexical, syntactic and semantic processes and the letter-sound
test, with the exception of the same-different test of the process of letter identification.
Conclusion: The findings suggest that the group of students with ADHD shows lower
performance compared to the group without problems, highlighting that the attentional
factor affects the cognitive functions impairing the acquisition of skills necessary to the
learning of reading.
Keywords: Assessment, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Reading
Processes.
