u09_a01 Human Development project

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Running head: Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 1 Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Development in Infants Stephen Scott Human Lifespan Development Human Development Project Capella University June 8, 2017

Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 2 Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Development in Infants During human lifespan, many people will procreate and become pregnant. Many woman plan for this wonderful event by ensuring they are getting proper nutrition, exercise, and genetic testing. There is some woman who do not take precautions to ensure their child is born healthy. They experiment with drugs while pregnant and even after the baby is born. This can cause the baby to be with long lasting damage to their brain. One area of the brain development that is affected is language. This paper will look at how Vygotsky’s theory on language development can explain why prenatal exposure to cocaine, nicotine, and antidepressants can have lasting damage on language development in infants. Vygotsky’s Theory on Language Development Language development in infants has intrigued researchers since the early 1900’s. Then in 1934 Lev Vygotsky became the leader on research into on how the infant cognitively develops and what factors contribute to this. (McLeod, 2014). His Social Development Theory showed the importance of how social interaction play a role in development. He theorized that there was no way to quantify language development with one theory or principle and cognitive development was influenced by social and cultural context (McLeod, 2014). This conflicted with other prominent theories such as Piaget’s. Per McLeod (2014), “Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language: social speech which is external communication used to talk to others (typical from the age of two); private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and serves an intellectual function; and finally private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven) (pg. 6)”. These natural language

Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 3 development processes that Vygotsky identified can be severely disrupted or altered when a child is prenatally exposed to drugs. Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Effects on Language Development The prenatal period is especially sensitive to changes in environment or chemicals. One of the most dangerous chemicals that a pregnant woman can consume is Cocaine. Once Cocaine enter the system is causes the blood vessels that carry oxygen to tighten for fifteen minutes and this can change the creation and operation of neurons in the fetus’s brain (Berk, 2014). Since the 90’s researchers have studied the effects of prenatal Cocaine abuse on an infant’s brain. A new study looked at how long term effects of prenatal Cocaine might affect a child’s language development at 12 years old. The study focused on 364 children, with 183 being exposed to cocaine prenatally and 181 who were not, by testing the mothers in urban areas for cocaine right before they gave birth or immediately after (Short, Min, Wu, Lang, &Singer, 2013). They found that all these women were older, typically took other drugs also, and received minimal prenatal care. Compared to non-exposed babies they were born with smaller bodies, heads, and overall less weight, and these children were then tracked through their language development until they were twelve years old (Short et al., 2013). The findings showed that there were some negative differences in language development between the cocaine exposed children and the non-cocaine exposed children. One difference that was found was the ability to combine sentences in both writing and speaking, even after adjusting for differences in their home surrounding, the mother temperament, and if other prenatal drugs were used (Short et al., 2013). The way they tested the children on sentence combining was to have them hear a couple simple sentences and try to combine them into a single sentence that follows proper grammar (Short et al., 2013). These tests proved their theory of negative effects on language development due to cocaine exposure

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Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 4 prenatally. The problem with this research is they were not able to conduct an extensive testing on all aspects of speech and language because they did not have enough time, due to the large number of participants. This show that more studies need to be conducted on each individual area of language to determine what if any other affects may be apparent in adolescence. Prenatal Nicotine Exposure Effects on Language Development Another harmful chemical that can damage an infant prenatally is nicotine exposure. Even though all Americans now the how harmful the effects of smoking cigarettes can be during pregnancy it is estimated that 14% of all pregnant woman still smoke (Berk, 2014). There are many negative effects that smoking during pregnancy can have on an infant when born. This is because nicotine, narrows blood vessels, slows the flow of blood in utero, keeps the placenta from developing normally, and could led to harm of the central nervous system (Berk, 2014). Many negative effects of nicotine exposure on infants in widely accepted as fact. In a new study researchers sought out how nicotine could determine language abilities. They recruited 14,701 women who smoked while pregnant to participate in the study and 7,170 of those children were measured on language at eight years old (Eicher, Powers, Cho, Miller, Mueller, Ring, & Gruen, 2013). When the children were age eight they went through testing to determine language impairment. The interviewers had the children recite recordings of non-words and responded to questioning about different paragraphs that were read to them. This could show how their short- term phonological memory and processing abilities had developed (Eicher et al., 2013). Per Eicher et al., (2013), “Subjects exposed to prenatal nicotine performed on average 4.75-5.39% worse on language measures compared to non-exposed subjects. When separated into nicotine dosage categories, those exposed to high levels of prenatal nicotine performed on average the worst on all measures compared to low (ranging from 6.20-7.95% worse) and no exposure

Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 5 (ranging from 9.63-11.58%) groups (pg. 3). These results show that there is a direct correlation between nicotine exposure and language development. Also, they found that these negative effects of nicotine only seemed to affect the child’s language skills, but had no effect on their overall cognitive abilities (Eicher et al., 2013). This study was found to have a few limitations. The researchers were unable to account for women who might have limited their smoking at certain times in pregnancy, there are still many areas of language that the researchers were not able to study, and due to time constraints, some of the data may be incomplete (Eicher et al., 2013). Once more studies are done to consider all aspects of language development researchers will have a better idea of just how damaging the effects of nicotine are when taken prenatally. Prenatal Antidepressant Exposure Effects on Language Development Many women throughout the US suffer from a form of depression. They are usually prescribed antidepressant medications to help them manage the imbalances in their brain. When they become, pregnant many continue to use these drugs for fear their mental health will diminish and cause a danger to their unborn baby. Continual use of these medication can cause a baby to be born premature and have difficulties with breathing and high blood pressure when born (Berk, 2013). New studies have also looked at whether the use of antidepressants can interfere with healthy language development in infants. Researchers conducted two experiments to test visual language discrimination at 10 months and fetal consonant and vowel discrimination, with infants split in exposure and non-exposure groups (Weikum, Oberlander, Hensch, & Werker, 2012). These finding show that infants exposed to antidepressants had a faster timing of perceptual attunement and demonstrated an enhanced speech perception system (Weikum, Oberlander, Hensch, & Werker, 2012). This shows that taking SRI during pregnancy can have certain benefits for the infant as he starts to perceive speech. The limitations of this

Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 6 study are whether these gains will continue as they develop into a toddler and adult. Researchers will need to do more longitudinal and cross-sectional studies to determine how antidepressant use affects language development later in childhood. Summary and Conclusion In conclusion, the prenatal period is one that can be affected by many different factor. Anything that a pregnant woman consumes has the potential to cause harm to her baby. Prenatal drug abuse can cause deficits in language development in infants that follow them into childhood. Cocaine and nicotine exposure show that language development is impaired in many ways. Researchers still don’t have complete data on all the areas of language development that are affected by taking these two drugs. On the other hand, taking antidepressants can lead to gains in an infant’s speech perception system. These infants show an enhanced ability compared to non-exposed infants. These studies show that more research needs to be done on how cognitive language development can be impacted in the prenatal period. Furthermore, all pregnant women should seek prenatal counseling to ensure they have this information so they can hopefully make better decisions about what they expose their fetus to.

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Prenatal Drug Exposure Can Affect Language Develop 7 References Berk, L. (2014). Exploring lifespan development (Third ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education. (Eicher, Powers, Cho, Miller, Mueller, Ring, & Gruen, 2013). Eicher, J. D., Powers, N. R., Cho, K., Miller, L. L., Mueller, K. L., Ring, S. M., . . . Gruen, J. R. (2013). Associations of prenatal nicotine exposure and the dopamine related genes ANKK1 and DRD2 to verbal language. PLoS One, 8 (5) doi: http://dx.doi.org.library.capella.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0063762Lewis, B. A., Minnes, S., Short, E. J., Min, M. O., Wu, M., Lang, A., . . . Singer, L. T. (2013). Language outcomes at 12 years for children exposed prenatally to cocaine. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research (Online), 56 (5), 1662-1676. Retrieved from https://library.capella.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docv w/1473653509?accountid=27965 McLeod, S. A. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html Weikum, W. M., Oberlander, T. F., Hensch, T. K., & Werker, J. F. (2012). Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (Supplement 2), 17221-17227. doi:10.1073/pnas.1121263109

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