School and neuropsychological performance of evacuated children in Kyiv 11years after the Chornobyl disaster

This paper examines the cognitive and neuropsychological functioning of chi ldren who were in utero to age IS months at the time of the Chornobyl disas ter and were evacuated to Kyiv from the 30-kilometer zone surrounding the p lant. Specifically, we compared 300 evacuee children at ages 10-12 with 300 non-evacuee Kyiv classmates on objective and subjective measures of attent ion, memory, and school performance. The evacuee children were not signific antly different from their classmates on the objective measures (grades; Sy mbolic Relations subtest of the Detroit Test; forms 1 and 2 of the Visual S earch and Attention Test; Benton Form Al Trails A: Underline the Words Test ) or on most of the subjective measures (the attention subscale of the Chil d Behavior Checklist completed by mothers, the attention items of the Iowa Conners Teacher's Rating Scale; mother and child perceptions of school perf ormance). The one exception was that 31.3% of evacuee mothers compared to 7 .4% of classmate mothers indicated that their child had a memory problem. H owever, this subjective measure of memory problems was not significantly re lated to neuropsychological or school performance. No significant differenc es were found in comparisons of evacuees and classmates who were in utero a t the time of the explosion, children from Pripyat vs. other villages in th e 30-kilometer zone? and children manifesting greater generalized anxiety. For both groups, children with greater Chornobyl-focused anxiety performed significantly worse than children with less Chornobyl-focused anxiety on me asures of attention. The results thus fail to confirm two previous reports that relatively more children from areas contaminated by radiation had cogn itive deficits compared to controls. Possible reasons for the differences i n findings among the studies are discussed.