2011 FACE RESEARCH ROUNDTABLE POSTER COMPETITION ABSTRACTS Abstracts

Background: Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) show severe behaviour and cognitive impairments. These children also display striking difficulties in adaptive and social functioning, which extend beyond their cognitive delays. However, the factors that contribute to these social impairments are not well understood. The objective of the present study was to investigate two areas of social cognition, namely social perspective taking and affect processing as potential contributing factors to the cognitive, behaviour and social impairments observed in FASD. Methods: Studied at The Hospital for Sick Children were 42 children between 8 to 12 years of age; 25 had a diagnosis of a FASD (mean age 10.35) and 17 were typically developing control (TDC) children (mean age 10.25). The Theory of Mind and Affect Recognition subtests from the NEPSY-II (Korkman, Kirk & Kemp, 2009) were used to investigate social perspective taking and affect processing, respectively. Results: Children with FASD had poorer social perspective taking skills compared to TDC, as observed by their lower percentiles on the Theory of Mind subtest. The FASD group also had poorer affect processing compared to the TDC group. Of note, the mean score on the Affect Recognition subtest for the FASD group remained in the average range, whereas the mean score for TDC approached the high average range. The FASD group, however, made more errors on happy, neutral and angry facial expressions. Conclusions: Children with FASD displayed reduced social perspective taking and affect processing abilities, compared to TDC. These social cognitive weaknesses may contribute to the poor behaviour regulation observed in children with FASD, and significantly impacts their daily social functioning.