Executive Function Domains among Children with ADHD: Do they Differ between Parents and Teachers Ratings?

The purpose of this study was to evaluate parents and teachers behavior rating measures of executive functions (EFs) in everyday activities in ADHD children, predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI) and combined type (ADHD-CT), relative to their typically developing peers. Sixteen children with ADHD combined type and fourteen with ADHD predominantly inattentive type were age- and gender-matched to thirteen typically developing peers. Both parents and teachers of the participants completed the BRIEF. As expected, the executive functioning of children with ADHD were rated significantly worse than those of controls by both parents and teachers. Thus, parent and teachers reported more EF impairments in the ADHD groups, predominantly inattentive and combined types, than in the control group. Also, ADHD-CT was rated by parents and teachers as lower than the ADHD-PI group on several scales. Significant associations were obtained between parent and teacher ratings in each group. For the ADHD groups, compared with parents, teachers rated children as having more problems in the majority of the scales. Parent and teacher perceptions of executive functioning in children with ADHD align with prior findings of executive deficits that have been documented on neuropsychological assessments and experimental tasks. These findings highlight the diagnostic utility of behavioral ratings of executive function; however, behavioral ratings should not be assumed to be a proxy for performance on measures of executive function in clinical practice.