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School and Neuropsychological Performance of Evacuated Children in Kyiv 11 Years after the Chornobyl Disaster
Author(s) -
Litcher Leighann,
Bromet Evelyn J.,
Carlson Gabrielle,
Squires Nancy,
Goldgaber Dmitry,
Panitalia,
Golovakha Evgenii,
Gluzman Semyon
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/1469-7610.00613
Subject(s) - psychology , neuropsychology , anxiety , neuropsychological test , child behavior checklist , developmental psychology , checklist , cognition , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology
This paper examines the cognitive and neuropsychological functioning of children who were in utero to age 15 months at the time of the Chornobyl disaster and were evacuated to Kyiv from the 30‐kilometer zone surrounding the plant. Specifically, we compared 300 evacuee children at ages 10–12 with 300 non‐evacuee Kyiv classmates on objective and subjective measures of attention, memory, and school performance. The evacuee children were not significantly different from their classmates on the objective measures (grades; Symbolic Relations subtest of the Detroit Test; forms 1 and 2 of the Visual Search and Attention Test; Benton Form A; Trails A; Underline the Words Test) or on most of the subjective measures (the attention subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist completed by mothers; the attention items of the Iowa Conners Teacher's Rating Scale; mother and child perceptions of school performance). 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. However, this subjective measure of memory problems was not significantly related to neuropsychological or school performance. No significant differences were found in comparisons of evacuees and classmates who were in utero at the time of the explosion, children from Pripyat vs. other villages in the 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 measures of attention. The results thus fail to confirm two previous reports that relatively more children from areas contaminated by radiation had cognitive deficits compared to controls. Possible reasons for the differences in findings among the studies are discussed.