The mediating role of working memory in the relationship between emotion dysregulation and social functioning in Saudi adults with ADHD

The aim study was to investigate working memory as a mediator on the relationship between emotional dysregulation and social functioning in Saudi Arabian adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The present study has a non-experimental, cross-sectional correlational-causal research design, carried out using convenience sampling. The study included 88 adult ADHD patients who did not have any psychiatric illness as specified in the exclusion criteria. They aged 20 to 50 years. The bootstrap method of the PROCESS model 4 macro program in SPSS, was used to examine the mediating role of WM between emotional dysregulation and social functioning. A mediating effect test was run with 5000 resamples and a 95% confident interval. If the 95% confident interval for the mediating effect did not contain 0, the effect was considered significant. The results indicate that working memory mediated the relationship between emotion dysregulation and social functioning: the development of working memory was related to improved social functioning.