Social cognition in South African children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
type: CreativeWork
description: Research on the social-cognitive profile of individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has confirmed poorer social skills in these children compared to healthy controls, independent of overall cognitive functioning. However, although children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are known to have deficits in social-cognitive function, very little is known about the mechanisms underlying these impairments. I investigated social cognition in children with FASD by assessing Theory of Mind and emotion recognition ability as potential determinants of impaired social cognition, behaviourally and using neuroimaging. Study I showed that children aged 9-11 years (N =63) with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and partial FAS performed more poorly on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, after controlling for IQ and executive function, suggesting difficulty in inferring people's mental states. Study II investigated the ability of 9-12 year old children (N = 88) to read people's facial emotions because this more basic level of social cue processing was considered a possible precursor to the impairments seen in Study I. An affective appraisal and working memory (WM) task (1- back and 2-back) was administered. Groups performed well on the 1-back, indicating ability to meet WM demands of the affective appraisal task. No behavioural group differences were shown on the affective appraisal task, which confirmed the suitability of this task to identify possible differences in neuronal activation, which I investigated in Study III. Analyses of these fMRI data on 64 children aged 9 -14 years showed that participants performed well on the relatively simple affective appraisal task. However, greater cortical activation was shown in exposed children when processing positive but less when processing negative facial expressions. These data demonstrate that heavy PAE alters activation within a cortical affective processing network. Because we know that children with FASD have alcoho…
abstract: Research on the social-cognitive profile of individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has confirmed poorer social skills in these children compared to healthy controls, independent of overall cognitive functioning. However, although children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are known to have deficits in social-cognitive function, very little is known about the mechanisms underlying these impairments. I investigated social cognition in children with FASD by assessing Theory of Mind and emotion recognition ability as potential determinants of impaired social cognition, behaviourally and using neuroimaging. Study I showed that children aged 9-11 years (N =63) with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and partial FAS performed more poorly on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, after controlling for IQ and executive function, suggesting difficulty in inferring people's mental states. Study II investigated the ability of 9-12 year old children (N = 88) to read people's facial emotions because this more basic level of social cue processing was considered a possible precursor to the impairments seen in Study I. An affective appraisal and working memory (WM) task (1- back and 2-back) was administered. Groups performed well on the 1-back, indicating ability to meet WM demands of the affective appraisal task. No behavioural group differences were shown on the affective appraisal task, which confirmed the suitability of this task to identify possible differences in neuronal activation, which I investigated in Study III. Analyses of these fMRI data on 64 children aged 9 -14 years showed that participants performed well on the relatively simple affective appraisal task. However, greater cortical activation was shown in exposed children when processing positive but less when processing negative facial expressions. These data demonstrate that heavy PAE alters activation within a cortical affective processing network. Because we know that children with FASD have alcoho…
author: Lindinger, Nadine Michelle
language: eng
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:45Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Psychology

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20333