Executive Functioning in Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Profiles and Age-Related Differences

Abstract

The goal of this project was to examine the profile of executive function (EF) deficits and age-related differences among children with FASD. Twenty-nine children with FASD (8 to 16 years of age) completed 8 tests from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS). They had difficulty on many components of EF including cognitive flexibility, inhibition, some measures of verbal fluency, abstract thinking, deductive reasoning, hypothesis testing, problem solving, and concept formation. A distinctive profile emerged with performance being poorest on the card sorting test and relatively high on category fluency, design fluency, and the tower test, indicating relative strengths on some visual-spatial EF tasks. Older children with FASD showed more difficulty (relative to the norm) on some verbal tests of EF than younger children with FASD, suggesting that difficulty on some verbal EF tasks appears to become more pronounced with increasing age.

Keywords:

• Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
• Executive Functions
• Profile
• Age differences
• Children

This research was conducted with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Thanks to Katy Wyper for assisting with the editing and referencing of this manuscript.