College Students With ADHD Traits and Their Language Styles

Abstract

Objective: As an exploratory study, this article investigated the relationship between ADHD symptoms and the style of language use of undergraduate college students in Korea. Method: For this study, participants were asked to use stream-of-consciousness writing about any topic. Then, each participant’s piece of writing was analyzed by the Korean Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (KLIWC), a language analysis program. Results: The findings in this study demonstrated that college students with ADHD symptoms used significantly less “clauses per sentence,” “morphemes per sentence,” “numeral pronouns,” “English,” and “home,” whereas they used significantly more “sentences,” “adjectives,” and “TV and movie” in their consciousness writing. Conclusion: This study indicates that college students with ADHD traits have a different language style from their non-ADHD cohorts. Further research studies should be conducted to replicate our findings and develop specific interventions accordingly.