(PS11-A15) Relationship Between Homework Problems, Surgency, and Irritability in Children with ADHD

Introduction: Children with ADHD significantly struggle with homework in comparison to their peers (Epstein et al., 1993). “Homework problems” encompasses difficulties in two domains: homework completion (i.e., difficulties while completing homework) and homework management (i.e., difficulties that transpire outside of the time children complete their homework; Langberg et al., 2010). Children with ADHD have more difficulties with emotion regulation than children without ADHD. Recent literature suggests ADHD to be a heterogeneous disorder in which difficulties with emotion regulation can be categorized as surgent (i.e., the tendency to act impulsively and with a high intensity for pleasure) or irritable (i.e., the tendency to have more negative emotions; Karalunas et al., 2019). The current study aimed to examine how surgency and irritability would differentially estimate difficulty with the two domains of homework problems in children with ADHD.

Method: 49 children with ADHD ages 7-11(N_male= 28) were recruited from a community-based sample. Parents were administered the DISC to evaluate for ADHD and completed the Homework Problems Checklist during the baseline session to assess children’s difficulty with homework. Ecological momentary assessment protocol was used to measure surgency and irritability, in which parents completed the PANAS-Short Form to rate their child’s emotions three times a day for 7-days.

Results: Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were chosen to assess how surgent and irritable profiles of ADHD differentially and uniquely contributes to homework problems in children with ADHD. Age, sex, and non-white status were entered in the first step as covariates, ADHD severity level in the 2^nd step, and the positive and negative affect were entered in the 3^rd step for both regressions. Affect accounted for significant variance in problems with homework management, R² =.748,  ΔR²  =.60, F(6,37) = 7.81, p < .001, and homework completion, R²  =.614, ΔR^2. =.20, F(6,37) = 9.90, p < .001. Irritability was the only index that was uniquely significantly associated with homework management problems, β = .30, p = .013. Both irritability (β = 1.70, p = .020) and surgency (β = 1.30, p < .001) were uniquely significantly associated with homework completion problems.

Discussion: The current study provides novel insight into the relation between the surgent and irritable profiles of ADHD domains of homework difficulties in children. Specifically, these results suggest that irritability interferes with all aspects of the homework process for children with ADHD; whereas surgency only interferes with the homework completion process (i.e., the behaviors that transpire while homework is being done). These findings suggest that children with ADHD might benefit from homework interventions that target their specific mood profiles.