Exposure to alcohol in utero: Influence on cognitive function and learning in a northern elementary school population
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To establish the prevalence of fetal alcohol exposure; to compare physical, behavioural and learning patterns of children with significant alcohol exposure in utero with those of a group of children exposed to minimal alcohol; to assess the usefulness of a fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)/fetal alcohol effect (FAE) score; and to provide feedback to parents, schools and communities. DESIGN: Parent questionnaire, complete physical examinations of children, psychometric tests of the children using elements of the Pediatric Early Elementary Examination (PEEX) and the Pediatric Examination of Educational Readiness (PEER), ADD-H comprehensive teachers rating scale (ACTeRS) score, the newly developed FAS/FAE Score, and the Brigance Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills to assess language and mathematical achievement. Testers were blinded to the results of the assessments and questionnaires. SETTING: Grades 1 to 3 at Sir Alexander MacKenzie School in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. RESULTS: Twenty-four per cent of mothers reported frequent or binge drinking, and 76% of mothers reported abstinence or moderate alcohol intake. There were significant ethnic differences; none of the Caucasian mothers reported frequent or binge drinking during pregnancy compared with 40% of Inuvialuit and 33% of Indian mothers. Children with exposure to frequent or binge drinking in utero had smaller palpebral fissures (2.3+/-0.1 cm versus 2.5+/-0.3 cm, P<0.01), smaller palpebral fissure to intercanthal distance ratios (0.77+/-0.05 versus 0.86+/-0.10, P<0.01) and smaller head circumferences (52.1+/-1.6 cm versus 53.6+/-1.6 cm, P<0.01) than those exposed to moderate drinking or abstinence. Children exposed to frequent or binge drinking in utero also demonstrated poorer coordination (P<0.005) and cortical function (P<0.01), attention problems, hyperactivity (ACTeRS), and poorer scholastic achievement in language (P<0.001) and mathematics (P<0.01) than their minimally exposed counterparts. In children in grades 2 and 3, a significant negative correlation was found between FAS/FAE scores and language (r=-0.55, P<0.001) and mathematical achievement (r=-0.28, P=0.20). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of drinking during pregnancy in the northern population studied was high, and exposure in utero was associated with physical abnormalities, difficulties with coordination and cortical function, and significant delays in language and mathematical achievement. The FAS/FAE score may be useful in predicting success or failure in language development.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".