Global-local processing in children prenatally exposed to alcohol

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is associated with a wide variety of cognitive deficits and behavioral problems. Little is known, however, about the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on visuospatial processing. Alcohol-exposed and normal control children were presented with visual hierarchical stimuli consisting of large (global) letters or shapes constructed from the arrangement of numerous smaller (local) letters or shapes. The children were asked first to recall the global-local stimuli and different single-level stimuli from memory and then to copy them. Alcohol-exposed children were impaired in recalling local features relative to global features. When the alcohol-exposed children attempted to copy the same stimuli, there was also a selective deficit in local but not global reproduction. A control condition indicated that the selective deficit in local processing was not due to a size effect per se. These results suggest that prenatal alcohol exposure does not result in a unitary visual-spatial impairment, but rather, is manifested as a selective deficit in the visual processing of local (detail) features.