PRENATAL EXPOSURE TO ANTICONVULSANT DRUGS AND SPATIAL ABILITY IN ADULTHOOD

By disturbing steroid hormone balances in the fetus, the anticonvulsan t drugs phenobarbital and phenytoin may affect certain aspects of cogn itive functioning. In order to test this hypothesis, we studied hormon e related cognitive functioning in 72 men and 75 women who had been pr enatally exposed to these drugs and equal numbers of matched control s ubjects. The groups did not differ on word fluency, dichotic listening and a Water Level Test. On Card Rotations, however, anticonvulsant-ex posed males and females obtained significantly lower scores than contr ol subjects. These results suggest that in both males and females pren atal exposure to phenobarbital and phenytoin may affect holistic spati al processing.