In support of the previous literature, verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning performance was impaired in both AE (Aragón et al., 2008; Kaemingk & Halverson, 2000; Kodituwakku, 2007; Mattson, Crocker, et al., 2011; Willoughby, Sheard, Nash, & Rovet, 2008) and ADHD (Andreou, Agapitou, & Karapetsas, 2005; Frazier, Demaree, & Youngstrom, 2004; Pineda, Puerta, Aguirre, García-Barrera, & Kamphaus, 2007). However, we found that alcohol-exposed children, regardless of ADHD diagnosis, presented with more severe verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning deficits than non-exposed children with ADHD. This pattern of impairment (AE+/− < ADHD < CON) has not been specifically reported for these measures but is consistent with previous comparisons of visuospatial reasoning (Coles, et al., 1997) and verbal learning (Crocker, et al., 2011), and both domains have been consistently found to be severely impaired in alcohol-exposed children (for review, see Mattson, Crocker, et al., 2011). Spatial processing is considered a central component of the FASD neurobehavioral profile (Mattson et al., 2010) and is deficient in children with FASD even when compared to an IQ-matched comparison group (Carmichael Olson, Feldman, Streissguth, Sampson, & Bookstein, 1998).
