Global and widespread cognitive and behavioral
dysfunctions have been documented in children with heavy
prenatal alcohol exposure (CHPAE). In addition to further
exploring explicit-memory functioning in this population,
recent investigations have creatively looked into implicit-memory
functions by testing the ability of CHPAE to perform priming
(Mattson & Riley, 1999) or skill-learning (Carmichael
Olson et al., 1998; Sampson et al., 1997) tasks. These
empirical efforts have been supported by recent studies
which have linked prenatal alcohol exposure to disproportionate
volumetric reductions in subcortical structures such as
the basal ganglia (Mattson et al., 1994) and cerebellum
(Cavanagh et al., 1997), two structures that have been
shown to be actively involved in implicit memory (Doyon
et al., 1997, 1998; Heindel et al., 1989; Rauch et al.,
1997). In each case, a profile of preserved implicit and
impaired explicit-memory functioning has emerged. In the
skill-learning domain, for example, participants were required
to complete four blocks of 100 trials of the serial reaction
time (SRT) task in which participants have to press the
button which corresponds to the light that is illuminated,
and in which there is an embedded sequence of ten positions
that is repeatedly presented throughout blocks of trials.
On the latter task, both studies indicated that CHPAE children
tended to have longer mean response times than controls,
but that their learning profile did not differ across the
four blocks of trials.
The Effects of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure on Episodic Memory Functioning: A Systematic Review: Table 1.