Neonatal visual information processing in cocaine-exposed and non-exposed infants

This study investigated early neonatal visual preferences in 267 poly drug exposed neonates (131 cocaine-exposed and 136 non-cocaine exposed) whose dr ug exposure was documented through interviews and urine and meconium drug s creens. Infants were given four visual recognition memory tasks comparing l ooking time to familiarized stimuli of lattices and rectangular shapes to n ovel stimuli of a schematic face and curved hourglass and bull's eye forms. Cocaine-exposed infants performed more poorly, after consideration of conf ounding factors, with a relationship of severity of cocaine exposure to low er novelty sore found for both self report and biologic measures of exposur e. Findings support theories which link prenatal cocaine exposure to defici ts in information processing entailing attentional and arousal organization al systems. Neonatal visual discrimination and attention tasks should be fu rther explored as potentially sensitive behavioral indicators of teratologi c effects.