 
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on December 9, 2010
Researchers and parents have recognized that if a child is experiencing trouble with reading, symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, are often also present.
New research may give clues to why these complex childhood disorders often appear together.
In the new report, researchers suggest that the disorders have common genetic influences. This linkage may also lead to a slow processing speed when reading; that is, the brain takes longer to make sense of the information it receives.
The researchers looked at 457 pairs of twins from the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC) twin study, an ongoing study of the causes of reading disabilities, ADHD, and related disorders.
Erik Willcutt, Ph.D., and colleagues compared groups of participants with and without RD and ADHD, using a variety of tests to measure general cognitive ability, processing speed, reading and language skills, and then analyed results from pairs of twins within those groups to determine the genetic causes of any correlations.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/12/09/genetic-link-between-reading-disability-and-adhd/21666.html
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