Contributions of attentional control, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and reading skills to performance on a fourth-grade state writing test

Writing proficiency facilitates higher achievement in educational and professional endeavors, yet most students fail to meet national writing benchmarks by the end of high school. Attentional control and overall reading skill are documented to result in better writing quality; however, most research on these relationships has focused on early elementary students (K-3rd grade. This project evaluated the relationship between attentional control, hyperactivity-impulsivity, word reading, and reading comprehension to overall writing performance on a high-stakes writing test. Participants included 266 fourth-grade struggling readers who completed the Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal Behavior (SWAN; Swanson et al., 2001, 2012) for attentional control and hyperactivity-impulsivity, the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III; Woodcock et al., 2001) Letter-Word Identification test for word reading, the WJ-III Passage Comprehension test for reading comprehension, and the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) writing test for overall writing. Hyperactivity-impulsivity was not related to word reading (β = 0.02, p > .05), reading comprehension (β = 0.06, p > .05), or writing (β = 0.14, p > .05), whereas attentional control (β = 0.51, p < .01) and reading comprehension (β = 0.55, p < .001) contributed to overall writing. Reading comprehension (β = 0.55, p < .01) had a greater impact on writing than word reading (β = 0.13, p > .05), which suggests that as academic rigor increases in the upper elementary school grades (4th grade and higher), basic skills are less predictive of success on complex tasks such as writing. Implications for increasing writing proficiency through research and practice are discussed.