foreign language development in adhd-diagnosed and non-diagnosed children: an experimental research

Objective: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) is one of the most prevalent behavioural disorders among children in which l1 impairments are often displayed. there is a conventional assumption that adhd-diagnosed children experience difficulties in l2 development as well. the present research aimed at investigating possible l2-related behaviours of adhd-diagnosed children.methods: to track l2 profiles among adhd children, this mixed methods study examined l2 learning performance of adhd-diagnosed children in terms of english phonological, lexical, and syntactic development compared with typically developing children. to this end, 10 adhd-diagnosed and 10 typically-developing children were recruited from a public primary school located in kerman, iran, throughout the 2022-2023 academic year. the participants were then assigned to two experimental groups and given the english instructions with the same instructor. results: the quantitative results showed that adhd-diagnosed learners underperformed the typically-developing learners in all phonological, morphological, and syntactic production and recognition tests. however, the only significant difference was in the phonological recognition test (p = 0.04). also, the qualitative results demonstrated that both groups were almost equally engaged in classroom interactions.conclusion: the findings highlighted the importance of speech processing and sustained attention in lexical and syntactic learning ability among adhd students. the implications of the study for l2 instructors were discussed.