During the next five years, Case Western Reserve University psychologist Lynn Singer and her research collaborators will track one of the largest groups of cocaine-exposed children in the nation.

These children at 9, 10, 11 and 12 years of age will be compared to children who were not exposed to cocaine in order to assess the risks of prenatal exposure to the drug and to assess the role of the environment on the outcome of drug-exposed children at school age.

This continuation of their research is supported by a new $4.9 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health. The grant will take the researchers up to their 14th year of funding.

Singer and her team have followed these children since birth. In prior studies of this group, the researchers found that prenatal cocaine exposure was associated with poorer fetal growth, neonatal attentional abnormalities, less developed cognitive skills at 2 years and poorer general knowledge/arithmetic and visual spatial skills at 4 years.

Singer is a professor at the Case School of Medicine and interim provost and university vice president at Case.

Her collaborators include Barbara Lewis, associate professor of pediatrics; Betsy Short, associate professor of psychology; Sandra Russ, professor of psychology; Lester Kirchner, assistant professor of pediatrics; Sonia Minnes, research associate; and Mee Young Oh-Min, research associate, all of Case and Nancy Klein, professor at Cleveland State University.

Return to the online edition of the 10-2-03 Campus News.