From: Integrating care for individuals with FASD: results from a multi-stakeholder symposium
Domain | Characteristics and Commonly Associated Disabilities |
---|---|
Physical Motor Skills | Gross and fine motor skills. Poor hand/eye coordination and sensory input. Abnormal muscle tone effects balance. Children may demonstrate problems or be developmentally delayed with simple tasks such as using scissors or pencils. |
Sensory Processing Skills | Problems processing and interpreting sensory information (e.g., touch, sound, movement). Often are oversensitive resulting in over stimulation which leads to anxiety, aggressive behaviour and inability to learn or perform. |
Cognition | Knowing, perception, awareness and judgement. Problems include: learning difficulties, deficits in math and school performance, poor impulse control, social perception, poor capacity for abstract thinking, and problems with memory, attention, judgement or organization. |
Communication | Includes both expressive and receptive communication skills. May have problems with: using complex language structures, retrieving words from memory, following instructions, comprehension, discrimination, generalization, abstraction, and sequencing. |
Academic Achievement | Multiple deficits impact academic achievement in multiple areas. However, children may excel in one area but be poor in another. |
Memory | Problems with encoding, storage and retrieval. At times, may not be able to complete a task that has been successfully completed many times before. |
Executive Functioning Abstract Reasoning | Includes higher order cognitive processes: inhibition, flexibility, cause and effect, judgment and organization. May show poor ‘common sense’ and ability to learn from the past or generalize. |
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity | Difficulty maintaining attention, easily distracted by visual and auditory stimulation and may have problems self-regulating when they are overstimulated or tired. |
Adaptive Behaviour [Chudley et al., 2005] | Includes functioning independently and acquiring new daily living skills. Children have decreased capacity to develop/acquire new social, practical and conceptual skills to help them better respond to daily demands. |