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3-037 - Prenatal cocaine exposure: Does it predict executive function, substance use, and adjustment in adolescence and early adulthood?

Sat, March 21, 8:00 to 9:30am, Marriott, Floor: Level 4, Franklin Hall 10

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) emerged as a significant public health problem at the end of the 20th century, with Time Magazine running a cover story alleging “Crack kids: Their mothers used drugs, and now it’s the children who suffer” (May, 1991). Longitudinal studies, however, are now able to empirically address the extent to which PCE actually predicts important developmental outcomes in adolescence and early adulthood. The interrelated outcomes of executive functioning, substance use, and adjustment will be examined as a function of PCE in four prospective studies.

The first paper finds PCE to predict self-reported inhibitory control deficits and performance on a spatial planning task at age 15. Violence exposure and maternal psychological distress also predicted poor behavioral regulation. The second paper finds violence exposure and prenatal tobacco exposure, but not PCE, to predict poorer behavioral regulation as assessed by teachers during the high school years. The third paper finds psychosocial factors (e.g., adolescent depressive symptoms, parental attitudes toward substance use, and friends’ own substance use) but not PCE to predict alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use at age 15 to 17. The fourth paper finds violence exposure in early childhood, but not PCE, to predict a composite index of drug use, psychiatric/psychological, relationship, and legal problems in early adulthood. Collectively, these well-controlled studies suggest that environmental risk factors in childhood exert a greater impact than PCE on outcomes during adolescence and early adulthood.

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