new corpus on children exposed to cocaine in utero

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
   I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of a corpus of samples of
the language of children exposed to cocaine in utero.  The data come from
Margo Malakoff of Harvey Mudd College and Linda Mayes of Yale University.
The following is a description of this new data set.  It can be found in
/clinical/malakoff.sit.  Please note that I have decided to use the name
"clinical" rather than "impaired" to refer  to the directory of language from
clinical subtypes in order to avoid leading people to make implicit judgments
regarding the nature of the language of clinical subjects.

--Brian MacWhinney


A sample of 74 infants (46 drug cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 28
non-cocaine-exposed) were randomly selected from a large longitudinal study
of the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on infant and child development.
The mean age of the cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group was 24 months, 5
days (range from 22.9 to 26.1 months); the mean age of the
non-cocaine-exposed group was 24 months, 4 days (range from 22.9 to 26.8
months).  There were 19 boys  and 27 girls in the
cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed group and 10 boys and 18 girls in the
non-cocaine-exposed group. All children were accompanied by mothers.
Maternal cocaine exposure status was determined either by self-report of use
during pregnancy or by a positive urine screen at a prenatal visit or at
delivery.  Non-exposed status was ascertained by maternal and infant urine
toxicology and a negative maternal history of cocaine use during pregnancy
and at the time of delivery.  All  infants in this sample remained in their
mothers¹ care after delivery.
The sample was predominantly African American (85%
cocaine-and-other-drug-exposed and 82% non-cocaine-exposed).  Most women were
in their twenties, however cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers were
significantly older (mean age = 28.5)  than non-cocaine-exposed mothers (mean
age = 24.9) , F(1,71) = 12.74, p < .001.  The majority of the women in both
groups were single mothers. There were no differences in the proportion of
mothers in each group receiving prenatal care, and the majority of women in
both groups had at least one prenatal visit.
	Additional background information on children and mothers is available from
Malakoff, M. E., Mayes, L. C., Schottenfeld, R.S., & Howell, S.  (1999)
Language production at 24 month-old inner city children of
cocaine-and-other-drug-using  mothers. Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology., 20.