Sensible Sentences: Measuring psychosocial maturation in adolescents with and without learning disorders and/or ADHD.

292 normal developing adolescents and 102 adolescents with a diagnosis of a learning disability (LD) and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were assessed with the Dutch version of the Sentence Completion Test for Youth (SCT-Y; Westenberg et al., 2004). In the non-clinical sample and in line with the literature, an increase in psychosocial development with age and a gender difference in favor of the female subjects was found. This gender difference became apparent at the expected time (middle adolescence). In the clinical group the female advantage in psychosocial maturity was only very small. The clinical group showed an increase in maturity with age, although at a slower rate then their normal developing peers. Delay in psychosocial development was for some individuals moderate to large in early and middle adolescence, although a substantial part of the adolescents with LD and/or ADHD functioned at an age appropriate level. In late adolescence the proportion of individuals in the lower developmental levels was comparable to that in the normal developing group.