Psychometric Screening for Attention Deficit Disorder in a Clinical Setting

There is growing dissatisfaction with the DSM-III definition of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and considerable debate among researchers as to whether ADD is a distinct disorder. Additionally, clinicians have relied on nonobjective behavioral observation to diagnose ADD. The present study attempted to find commonly used tests that could discriminate between an ADD sample and a control group with no DSM-III diagnosis. Subjects were 88 children, 7 to 10 years of age, who had received a battery of psychological tests. Discriminant analysis confirmed that hypothesized attention tests from the WISC-R, ITPA, Detroit, plus the GFW Auditory Selective Attention Test, significantly differentiated between the two groups and classified 74% of the cases correctly. It was concluded that use of these tests might add objective evidence to ADD screening and that the overall results lent support to ADD as a valid diagnostic classification.