Neurocognitive Habilitation Therapy for Children With Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: An Adaptation of the Alert Program®

Abstract

These findings yield promising evidence of the effectiveness of the neurocognitive habilitation intervention in improving executive functioning and emotional problem solving in children with FAS or ARND.

Complete Issue Volume 32 Number 2

“…Of these studies, 21 met the inclusion criteria. Over half of these studies used experimental or quasi-experimental methods (Bertrand, 2009;Coles, Kable, & Taddeo, 2009;Engle, 2008;Kable, Coles, & Taddeo, 2007;Keil, Paley, Frankel, & O'Connor, 2010;Kerns, Macsween, Wekken, & Gruppuso, 2010;Loomes, Rasmussen, Pei, Manji, & Andrew, 2008;O'Connor et al, 2012;Roebuck-Spencer & Mattson, 2004;Vernescu, 2007;Wells, Chasnoff, Schmidt, Telford, & Schwartz, 2012). Qualitative studies used purposeful sampling (Carpenter, 2011) and included a case study (Duquette, Stodel, Fullarton, & Hagglund, 2006) and pilot study (Grant et al, 2004).…”

“…However, a recent study has shown improvements in executive functioning skills (e.g. memory, cause and effect, and problem solving) for children with FASD (Wells et al, 2012).…”

“…Content of the program consisted of group learning activities, transition facilitation, and goodbye rituals (Wells et al, 2012). Review of content was conducted at the end of each week to promote children and caregiver's memory of the practices (Wells et al, 2012). Children in intervention groups demonstrated significant improvements compared to those in the control group, who received no intervention (p < 01) (Bertrand, 2009;Wells et al, 2012).…”

“…Randomly assigned children and families in the intervention group received 12-weeks of instruction lasting 75 minutes for each of the weekly sessions. Content of the program consisted of group learning activities, transition facilitation, and goodbye rituals (Wells et al, 2012). Review of content was conducted at the end of each week to promote children and caregiver's memory of the practices (Wells et al, 2012).…”

Interventions for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder: Meeting Needs Across the Lifespan

“…Wells et al [22] studied the efficacy of the neurocognitive habilitation intervention (based on the Alert Program®) focusing on self-regulation among 40 children (aged 6 to 11 years) with FASD. These researchers found that the intervention led to significant improvements in emotional functioning and parent-rated executive functional behaviors in a treatment group compared to a nointervention control group with prenatal alcohol exposure (n=38).…”