Abstract / Summary
Objectives: The aim of the current study was to get insight in intelligence and executive functioning profiles and their relation with gender and dyslexia and ADHD classifications.
Methods: We performed a latent profile analysis on IDS-2 data from 3,954 Dutch, German and Italian children (7 – 21 years).
Results: The results showed six profiles differing in overall cognitive level. Three profiles were relatively balanced (below-average, low-average, and average), one showed high-average scores with a clear strength in visual short-term memory and two showed only slight strengths and weaknesses. There were large gender differences between the profile, amongst which a clear overrepresentation of boys in the profile with balanced below-average scores. This profile, along with the one with low-average scores, had relatively high rates of classifications for both ADHD and dyslexia and scholastic skills in the low-average range. For the other profiles, the scholastic skills scores were largely comparable to those on intelligence and executive functioning.
Conclusion: Our results do not support the idea that ADHD or dyslexia classifications are related to specific weaknesses in a cognitive profile. This highlights the need for individualized assessment that takes into account both acquired academic competencies and innate cognitive capacities.