Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Nov 26;2(3):51-60.
doi: 10.7895/ijadr.v2i3.83.

A Practical Testing Battery to Measure Neurobehavioral Ability among Children with FASD

Wendy O Kalberg  1 , Philip A May  2 , Jason Blankenship  1 , David Buckley  1 , J Phillip Gossage  1 , Colleen M Adnams  3
Affiliations

A Practical Testing Battery to Measure Neurobehavioral Ability among Children with FASD

Wendy O Kalberg et al. Int J Alcohol Drug Res. .

Abstract

Aims: To determine a brief, practical battery of tests that discriminate between children with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and unexposed controls.

Design: Children received dysmorphology exams, a targeted battery of cognitive and behavioral tests, and their mothers were interviewed about maternal risk factors. Children diagnosed with an FASD and children unexposed to alcohol prenatally were compared on cognitive/behavioral test results.

Setting: A community in The Western Cape Province of South Africa.

Participants: Sixty-one, first grade children with FASD and 52 matched normal controls.

Measures: Statistical analyses of maternal drinking behavior and their child's test performance.

Findings: Self-reported maternal drinking patterns before during and after pregnancy were used to confirm prenatal exposures to alcohol in the group of children diagnosed with FASD. With this sample of children diagnosed with FASD and completely unexposed controls, the adverse effects of maternal drinking on children's performance are reported. Results of the battery of standardized cognitive and behavioral tests indicate highly significant differences (p ≤ .001) between groups on: intelligence, perceptual motor, planning, and logical, spatial, short term, long term, and working memory abilities. Furthermore, a binary logistical regression model of only 3 specific cognitive and behavioral tests, including Digit Span A+B (Wald = 4.10), Absurd Situation (Wald = 3.57), and Word Association (Wald = 4.30) correctly classified 79.1% of the child participants as FASD or controls.

Conclusions: A brief, practical set of tests can discriminate children with and without FASD and provide useful information for interventions for affected children.

Keywords: alcohol abuse; cognitive/behavioral testing; diagnosis; fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Testing Battery and Ability tested
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Aase JM. Clinical recognition of FAS: difficulties of detection and diagnosis. Alcohol Health and Research World. 1994;18:5–9. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aase JM, Jones KL, Clarren SK. Do we need the term “FAE”? Pediatrics. 1995;95:428–430. - PubMed
    1. Adnams CM, Kodituwakku P, Hay A, Molteno C, Viljoen D, May PA. Patterns of Cognitive-Motor Development in Children with FAS from a Community in South Africa. Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research. 2001;25:557–562. - PubMed
    1. Annett M. The growth of manual preference and speed. British Journal of Psychology. 1970;61:545–558. - PubMed
    1. Aragon AS, Kalberg WO, Buckley D, Barela-Scott LM, Tabachnick BG, May PA. Neuropsychological study of FASD in a sample of American Indian children: Processing simple versus complex information. Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research. 2008;32:2136–2148. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2008.00802.x. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources