The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Environmental Contaminants on Cognitive and Brain Development in Childhood and Adolescence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Exposure to environmental contaminants is ubiquitous. Studies increasingly suggest that these chemicals pose a risk for human health, including neurodevelopment in children. Prenatal exposure to environmental contaminants warrants particular concern given the fragility of fetal development and the foundational nature of this period for the rest of the lifespan. However, little is known about potential mechanisms. Furthermore, researchers and practitioners in psychology and child development are generally unaware of such toxicological research. \nThe objective of the present thesis is to examine the impact of prenatal contaminant exposure on neurodevelopment in children, explore avenues for future research on potential mechanisms, improve dissemination of toxicology studies to psychology researchers and practitioners, and advocate for a larger role of psychologists in prevention, intervention, and public policies. To do so, the thesis contains three manuscripts. \nThe first manuscript is a PRISMA-guided scoping review of studies on prenatal exposure to a wide range of environmental contaminants and various neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. This chapter provides an overview of neurotoxicology research from birth to age 17 inclusively and aims to make these findings more accessible to clinicians and researchers in fields relevant for child development. \nThe second manuscript is an empirical study within a pan-Canadian pregnancy cohort examining the association between prenatal exposure to a flame-retardant chemical and IQ at age 3 years. This chapter provides a typical example of a developmental neurotoxicology study in terms of its method, results, and effect sizes. \nThe third manuscript is an empirical study with an American community cohort composed of participants aged 6 to 20 years old. Participants underwent executive function testing and structural brain imaging at baseline and up to two follow-up sessions scheduled 15 months apart. This chapter aims to inform the design of future research into the mechanisms of neurotoxicity following contaminant exposure. \nOverall, prenatal contaminant exposure is associated with small adverse effects on cognition for individuals, but has significant societal implications. Future studies should aim to better characterize potential mechanisms like cortical morphology to inform prevention and intervention efforts. Lastly, the thesis highlights the benefits of disseminating neurotoxicology findings to psychologists and child development experts.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".