Smoking in pregnancy tied to lower reading scores

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/yu-sip111912.php

Public release date: 19-Nov-2012
Contact: Karen N. Peart
Yale University

Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that children born to mothers who smoked more than one pack per day during pregnancy struggled on tests designed to measure how accurately a child reads aloud and comprehends what they read.

The findings are published in the current issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.

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Gruen and his team from Yale and Brock University in Canada, compared performance on seven specific tasks – reading speed, single-word identification, spelling, accuracy, real and non-word reading, and reading comprehension – with maternal cigarette smoking, after adjusting for socioeconomic status, mother-child interactions, and 14 other potential factors.

They found that on average, children exposed to high levels of nicotine in utero — defined as the minimum amount in one pack of cigarettes per day — scored 21 percent lower in these areas than classmates born to non-smoking mothers. The children were tested at age seven and again at age nine.

Among students who share similar backgrounds and education, a child of a smoking mother will, on average, be ranked seven places lower in a class of 31 in reading accuracy and comprehension ability.

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