Neuropsychological Characteristics of Italian Children With Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Background-Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) display many problems ranging from deficits in intelligence to behavioral difficulties. Thus, many studies have aimed to better define the neuropsychological characteristics of children with FASD. The current article describes the neuropsychological characteristics of Italian children with severe diagnosis within FASD and compares them with controls. It was expected that intellectual functioning, language comprehension, academic skills, and inattention/hyperactivity would discriminate children with FASD from randomly-selected peers without FASD.

Prevalence and Characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

“…5,9 One approach used successfully to determine the minimal prevalence of FASD in communities in South Africa, [10][11][12][13][14] Italy, 15,16 and Croatia 17,18 uses active case ascertainment in schools. Providing targeted physical examinations and cognitive/ behavioral testing to primary school children [19][20][21][22] and interviewing their mothers [23][24][25] can be effective for studying FASD prevalence and characteristics.…”

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“…Analyzing the samples addressed in these studies, it was clear that mostly they consisted of milder forms of FASD or of individuals who had been exposed to alcohol, but without a diagnosis, as stated in several studies. 13,14,17,20,31,34,35,46,47 The fact that the samples presented predominantly milder forms of FASD resulted in higher scores. This explains why some studies state that most individuals who were prenatally exposed to alcohol are not intellectually impaired.…”

“…11 However, one clinical sample of a high-quality study was classifi ed in the middle range, possibly due to environmental factors that favoured the cognitive development of children. 17 When the sampled individuals who were exposed to alcohol were compared with each other, it was found that those with FAS had greater impairment in terms of general, 16,27,31 as well as verbal and non-verbal intelligence. 13 which indicated the most severe form of the spectrum.…”

“…15,16 Eight studies provided the results of Wechsler Scales subtests. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] The individuals who were prenatally exposed to alcohol had worse performances in the arithmetic subtest (44.4% of the samples had a scaled score below 6) 16,20,23 and signifi cantly underperformed in relation to the control group as shown in studies by Woods et al 16 and Gautam et al 21 Moreover, the samples that were exposed to alcohol showed impaired performance in the comprehension and vocabulary subtests (30% of the exposed samples had a scaled score below 6 in each subtest). 18,20,23 The performances that were least negatively affected in this population were in the symbol search subtest 15,18,20,21,23 (with 81.8% of the samples exposed to alcohol scoring above 6) and the picture arrangement subtest 15,18,20,21,23 (all samples scored above 6).…”

“…17,26 Consequently, a research that involves case-control is important to demonstrate the actual eff ect of fetal alcohol exposure.…”