CENTRAL AUDITORY PROCESSING IN SCHOOL-AGE-CHILDREN PRENATALLY EXPOSEDTO CIGARETTE-SMOKE

One hundred and ten, 6- to 11-year-old children from a low-risk, predo minantly middle class sample who are participants in an ongoing longit udinal drug study were assessed using a central auditory processing ta sk (SCAN) that made perceptual rather than linguistic demands. Materna l smoking during pregnancy was linearly associated with poorer perform ance on the overall SCAN and, particularly, the Competing Words subtes t which may be an indication of the child's auditory maturation. The s ignificant associations remained after adjusting for other drug use, d emographic variables, and passive smoke exposure both during pregnancy and postnatally. The child's recent second-hand smoke exposure was ev aluated by a parental questionnaire and by urine cotinine assay. Neith er prenatal nor postnatal passive smoke exposure was statistically sig nificantly associated with the SCAN results. However, among the childr en of nonsmokers, passive smoke exposure resulted in average scores si milar to those of the prenatal light smoking group. The findings are d iscussed in relation to earlier observations that have reported an ass ociation between smoking during pregnancy and altered functioning in t he offspring.