ADOLESCENTS FROM DRUG-USING FAMILIES

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While there is great public concern about the effects prenatal exposure to illicit drugs may have on the development of children, few studies have followed children with documented exposure histories past the first months of life. It is widely assumed that children born to drug-addicted mothers are at high risk for a variety of problems during childhood and for later drug abuse, but little is known about behavioral characteristics of these children or the types of family environments in which they live. The proposed research involves assessment of a sample of 37 urban African-American 14-year-old children who were exposed prenatally to opioid drugs. They will be contrasted with a demographically similar group of 41 children whose mothers had no history of opioid drug use at the time of their pregnancies. Previous assessments of these children at age 10 suggested that opioid-exposed children -- particularly opioid exposed boys -- showed signs of attention deficit as measured on computerized tasks of sustained attention, despite that the fact that they did not differ from other children in the sample in terms of their general intellectual functioning. In the proposed adolescent follow-up, children will be administered a more extensive battery of clinical neuropsychological assessments of attention to further clarify the nature of the attention problems present in the opioid-exposed children. Additionally, as the children enter the age period of particularly high risk for drug use, sexual activity, and delinquent behavior, a variety of assessments of psychosocial functioning will be administered. Assessments will also be made of the children's social environments and relationships with family members to determine what factors contribute to developmental risk and resiliency in this sample at very high risk. Such information on child and family development over time will be useful in planning preventive intervention programs for offspring of drug-addicted women and other high-risk urban children.