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Executive Function Strategies used by Children and Adolescents with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
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- Author / Creator
- Hutchison, Marnie Lenore
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The outcomes associated with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) are profound, affecting many aspects of cognitive, behavioural, and social development that can be seen in the day-to-day health and functioning of affected individuals. Executive dysfunction has been identified as a particular area of weakness for children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Researchers using various neuropsychological tests suggest that children with FASD underperform on many executive functioning tasks; however, they do not tell us which strategies children with FASD are capable of using to aid executive function performance. Observational data was collected on the strategies used by seven children with FASD as they completed cognitively demanding computer games as part of a larger executive function intervention study. Results revealed that children and adolescents used any number of 25 different strategies to aid their executive functioning performance. Furthermore, they were able to increase the number of strategies they used spontaneously and decrease the number of strategies used through prompting over the course of the intervention. Overall, older participants used more spontaneous strategies and significantly fewer prompted strategies than younger children. These results suggest that children and adolescents with FASD can use a wide and varied battery of executive function strategies that if transferred outside of the intervention setting, could have a potentially positive effect on their daily functioning.
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Graduation date
- Fall 2011
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Education
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.