Psychological Functioning of Children Exposed to Cocaine Prenatally

Abstract

A sample of 25 children between the ages of 2 to 5 years who had been exposed to cocaine prenatally, was compared to a control group of 18 children of similar background, not exposed to cocaine or other drugs prenatally, on several aspects of their development status. The AGS Screening Profile was administered by the same female examiner to all the children in the presence of their mothers. The structured interview sections of the instrument were administered tothemothers, and observations were also recorded on the mother-child interactions during the test period. The control group was significantly superior on all the subtests except for the Motor Coordination and Speech Articulation sections. Home Status was particularly superior for the control group. When this factor, however, was controlled by covariance analysis, the differences between the adjusted means of the two groups on their cognitive, language, and social functioning became non-significant statistically.