USING T.O.V.A. FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF ADHD: A CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT

The number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the general public awareness of ADHD has increased dramatically in the past decades.. Unfortunately, the assessment and diagnostic procedures for determining the presence of ADHD remains relatively uncertain and inconsistent among professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and pediatricians who make such diagnoses (National Institute of Health, 1998). Continuous performance tests, particularly Test of Variables of Attention (T.O.V.A.) are widely used in the assessment and study of ADHD. Although T.O.V.A. has reliably revealed differences between children with ADHD and normal controls, discrimination between children with clinical ADHD and children with sub-clinical levels of ADHD is problematic. Furthermore, most studies use convenience samples from clinical care settings that may not represent the ADHD population as a whole. Our study presents a summary of the research about the clinical utility of T.O.V.A. in discriminating between children with ADHD and those with other clinical disorders, or normal children. By presenting a case study we show how the results of T.O.V.A. are confirmed by the evaluation of Attention/Executive Functions using NEPSY. We also illustrate the added-value of T.O.V.A. in diagnosing the subtypes of ADHD.

KEYWORDS: ADHD, CPT, T.O.V.A, NEPSY.