Finally, the distinct behavioral phenotypes of children with FASD and ADHD have been evaluated and findings suggest that parent-reported behavioral measures are useful in detecting differences in clinical presentation between the two groups. On measures of adaptive function, only children with FASD display arrested development of socialization and communication skills with abilities failing to improve with increasing age. Although children with ADHD demonstrate impaired abilities on these domains, their difficulties appear to be characterized by a developmental delay with skills improving at a rate that is similar to controls (Crocker, et al., 2009). Children with FASD also demonstrate weaker daily living skills (Crocker, et al., 2009), social cognition, and facial emotion processing ability (Greenbaum, et al., 2009) than do children with ADHD and typically developing controls. See Figure 1 for a visual representation of the patterns of impairments in FASD and ADHD populations.
