A U.S. study finds that teen smokers have difficulty paying attention, with those whose mothers smoked while pregnant having the hardest time.
Dr. Leslie Jacobsen of the Yale University Medical School studied 181 teenagers, dividing them into four groups. She had 67 smokers whose mothers smoked while pregnant, 44 smokers with non-smoking mothers, 25 non-smokers whose mothers smoked during pregnancy and 45 non-smokers with non-smoking mothers.
The teens completed tests of visual and auditory attention. WebMD.com reported that teen smokers whose mothers smoked in pregnancy had the worst performance while non-smokers with non-smoking mothers did the best.
The research was reported in the online edition of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
