{"id":19630,"date":"2012-11-19T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=19630"},"modified":"2018-12-20T13:23:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T18:23:39","slug":"children-whose-mothers-smoked-during-pregnancy-score-lower-on-reading-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2012\/11\/children-whose-mothers-smoked-during-pregnancy-score-lower-on-reading-tests\/","title":{"rendered":"Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy score lower on reading tests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Developmental<\/a>

Developmental psychologist Jan Frijters' latest research shows children whose mothers smoked while pregnant scored lower on reading tests. <\/p><\/div>\n

Children whose mothers smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day score lower on reading tests than those of mothers who did not smoke during their pregnancies.<\/p>\n

This is the major finding of research done by Brock University and the Yale School of Medicine published online in the latest issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.<\/a><\/p>\n

Brock researcher Jan Frijters<\/a> explains that, other factors being equal, a child of a mother who smoked will be on average seven places lower in a class of 31 children in reading accuracy and comprehension.<\/p>\n

“Reading is key to almost all areas of learning,” says Frijters. “Difficulty in reading is going to have long-term – and possibly deep – impacts on a child’s intellectual development, socialization, self-confidence and possibly future aspirations.”<\/p>\n

Children in the study were tested at age seven and again at age nine.<\/p>\n

“We do know that the results are not linked to a mother’s education, the economic status of the family, how much the mother and child spoke with each other, or even how many books they read together,” says Frijters, a developmental psychologist in the Department of Child and Youth Studies.<\/p>\n

“We think nicotine may have a specific effect on a fetus’s developing brain,” he says. “That view is strengthened by the fact that the frequency and amount of smoking by the child’s father had no impact on the child’s reading.”<\/p>\n

Frijters and his Yale colleagues analyzed data from more than 5,000 families involved in the UK-based Avon Longitudinal Studies of Parents and Children<\/a>, which stretches back to 1990.<\/p>\n

This is the first study to analyze the impact of smoking on specific aspects of children’s reading ability, including reading speed, accuracy and comprehension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Children whose mothers smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day score lower on reading tests than those of mothers who did not smoke during their pregnancies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":17593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[45,426,687,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55213,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions\/55213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}