Differential Effects on Cognitive Functioning in 9- to 12-Year Olds Prenatally Exposed to Cigarettes and Marihuana

Abstract

Cognitive performance was examined in 131 9-12-year-old children for whom prenatal marihuana and cigarette exposure had been ascertained. The subjects, participants in an ongoing longitudinal study, were from a low-risk, predominantly middle class sample. The tasks included the WISC-III and a series of tests assessing aspects of cognition subsumed under the rubric of executive function. Consistent with results obtained at earlier ages, discriminant function analysis revealed a dose-dependent association, which remained after controlling for potential confounds (including secondhand smoke), between prenatal cigarette exposure and lower global intelligence scores with the verbal subtests of the WISC maximally discriminating among levels of in utero exposure. In contrast, prenatal marihuana exposure was not associated with global intelligence or the verbal subtests. Rather, this drug was negatively associated with the executive function tasks that require impulse control and visual analysis/hypothesis testing and with a number of WISC subtests requiring the same abilities. The interpretation of these results is discussed in terms of executive function and is related to earlier observations of this sample and to the extant prefrontal and general marihuana literature.

Association of prenatal maternal or postnatal child environmental tobacco smoke exposure and neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems in children.

“…The studies outlined in Table 1 (25). Seven studies examined the relationship of postnatal exposure to smoke and performance on a range of cognitive, perceptual, central auditory, and linguistic abilities (27,29,(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). Of the six studies that controlled for prenatal maternal smoking (27,(34)(35)(36)(37)(38), half (27,36,37) show clear decrements associated with postnatal ETS exposure.…”

“…Postnatal ETS exposure has also been associated with behavioral problems in all three studies that specifically examined behavior problems in children (31,32,40) and adequately controlled for home environment and other potentially intervening factors; two of these three studies (32,40), however, showed larger associations between behavioral problems and prenatal exposure to maternal smoke than with postnatal child ETS exposure. There are only three studies that investigated the relationship of maternal ETS exposure during pregnancy (28,36,38) and general cognitive performance, two of which were on the same cohort. The first study on the Ottawa cohort reported adverse cognitive effects of maternal ETS exposure during pregnancy as strong as those for active smoking (28) but did not take into account postnatal exposure, whereas the second study (38) showed no relationship between maternal ETS exposure during pregnancy among nonsmokers and general cognitive performance in their children.…”

“…In contrast, other follow-up investigations (37,38) of this same cohort, which used different assessment tools, found that children exposed to ETS during childhood but not children whose mothers were exposed to ETS during pregnancy had lower scores on tests of language/auditory processing (37). Although there were lower language/auditory scores among those exposed to ETS during childhood, when analyses were restricted to children of women who did not smoke during pregnancy, there were no genieral cogniitive effects (usilng a discrimlinianlt anlalysis score) of either prenatal maternal ETIS exposure or of postnatal child ETS exposure (38).…”

“…Few of the cited studies on the neurobehavioral effects of smoking attempted to separate the influence of in utero exposure to maternal smoking from the effects of the child's postnatal exposure to ETS. To determine the independent effect of postnatal ETS exposure would require a large sample Environmental Health Perspectives * Volume 107, Number A number of the investigations on neuropsychologic functioning of children exposed to ETS during childhood or of mothers exposed to ETS during pregnancy are from the Ottawa Prenatal Prospective Study (28,34,37,38). Effects of maternal exposure to ETS during pregnancy were examined in children 6-9 years of age by Makin et al (28) A two-group discriminant function successfully classified 83% of the children into their respective exposure groups based on their poorer performance, particularly in receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; PPTV), and on factors developed for perceptual organization and freedom from distractibility (from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenRevised).…”

Visuospatial Memory Deficits Emerging During Nicotine Withdrawal in Adolescents with Prenatal Exposure to Active Maternal Smoking

“…Prospective clinical studies have linked prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke to reductions in motor and verbal comprehension scores in children assessed at 13 months of age (Gusella and Fried, 1984), reductions in measures of language development, and general intellectual function in children assessed at 3, 4, 5, and 6 years of age (Fried and Watkinson, 1990;Fried et al, 1992), deficits in verbal and nonverbal learning and memory in preadolescents (Cornelius et al, 2001), and reductions in general intelligence in children assessed between 9 and 16 years of age (Fried et al, 1998(Fried et al, , 2003.…”