Processos de leitura em escolares com transtorno do déficit de atenção/hiperatividade

This study aimed to characterize and compare the performance of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and students with good academic performance on the readingassessment processes. Forty students ranging from 8 years and 2 months old to 10 years and 11 months old, from both genders, from 1st to 4th grades of elementary level, participated inthis study, distributed in two groups: GI, with 20 students with interdisciplinary diagnosis ofAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and GII, 20 students with good academic performance,paired with GI according to gender, age and school level. The students wereassessedthrough the Brazilian adaptation of the Assessment Process of Reading – PROLEC, composedof four blocks: identification of letters, lexical, syntactic and semantic processes. Statisticallysignificant difference occurred between GI and GII in the PROLEC tests, with the exception of thesame-different and lexical decision tests, indicating that the students from GI presented inferior performance when compared with students from GII. Regarding the classification of the resultsof PROLEC, there was a statistically significant difference in the lexical, syntactic and semanticprocesses and the letter and sound test, with the exception of same-different tests of identificationof letters process. The findings suggests that the group of students with ADHD showsinferior performance compared to the group without disabilities, highlighting that the attentionfactor affects the cognitive functions impairing the acquisition of skills necessary for reading.