Great interest has been shown in understanding higher-order cognitive processes in developmental psychopathologies, including FASD. Executive functions are related to frontal-subcortical circuits involving projections from the frontal lobes to the basal ganglia and thalamic nuclei (Cummings, 1993), which have been found to be vulnerable to prenatal alcohol exposure (Fryer et al., 2007; Mattson et al., 1996). Executive functions have been widely defined as “the ability to maintain an appropriate problem-solving set for attainment of a future goal” (pp. 201–202, Welsh & Pennington, 1988). This complex construct encompasses a variety of cognitive abilities, such as planning, response inhibition, and working memory, and involves the integration of more basic processes such as attention, memory, sensation, perception, and motor activity (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996).
