PI: Florencia Torche Institution: New York University
This study examines the effect of prenatal exposure to environmental stressors on birth weight and on early childhood development. The environmental stressors include the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in California, the 2005 Tarapaca earthquake in Chile, and the 2006 Lebanon War in Israel. The study addresses such questions as: Is exposure to environmental stressors detrimental for birth outcomes? When is prenatal stress more detrimental? Is the effect of stress unequally distributed along demographic and socioeconomic lines? The investigator also conducts a longitudinal survey of children exposed to the Chilean 2005 Tarapaca earthquake and a group of comparable control children. The researcher examines such questions as: What are the effects of in-utero exposure to stress on health, cognitive, and non-cognitive outcomes in early childhood? How do contextual socioeconomic, family, and neighborhood factors compensate for or exacerbate early disadvantage?
Broader impacts: This project has direct policy implications in the areas of support and assistance to pregnant women, particularly those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and on early child development. It also offers an interdisciplinary analytical approach including sociology, neuroscience, perinatology, and developmental psychology and builds an interdisciplinary network of collaborators.
"And surely we are all out of the computation of our age, and every man is some months older thanhe bethinks him; for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the elements, andthe malice of diseases, in that other World, the truest Microcosm, the Womb of our Mother.(Sir Thomas Browne 1672: XXXIX)" This research project studied the effect of being exposed to different sources of stress during the prenatal period. We know that stress has negative consequences for adults and children, but we know much less about the effects of stress exposure before birth. But the prenatal period is critical for later development, such that stress exposure in-utero may have long-lasting consequences. To address this question, the researcher exploited several "natural experients" in which some populations were randomly exposed to stress. One of these natural experiments was a strong earthquake in Chile. Given that it is impossible to know, with the current technology, when and where an earthquake would happen, its occurrence in a certain town can be seen as random, closely similar to randomly "assigning" stress in an experiment. Other stressors examined were an unannounced war in Israel, and the sudden increase in drug traffic-related violence in Medico. Under certain circumstances and thanks to the use of advanced statistical techniques, these events can be seen as random. The main finding from this research is that maternal exposure to acute and unexpected stress during pregnancy reduces the infant's birthweight. This effect is narrowly focused early in the pregnancy and occurs through a reduction of gestational age -- in other words babies exposed to stress in-utero are more likely to be born preterm. This negative effect is consequential because birthweight and gestational age are strong predictors of health, developmental and socioeconomic outcomes. Based on this finding, a second question was addressed: Do the negative effects of prenatal stress exposure extend to later outcomes? To address this question, the PI fielded a large survey of the children exposed to the strong earthquake in Chile, as well as "control children" i.e. children living in areas of Chile that happened not to be affected by the earthquake but that were similar in other respects. The survey, conducted in 2012-2013, included an interview for the mother, as well as a battery of assessments for the child, including tests to measure cognitive ability, socio-emotional development, executive function, health, and educational attainment. The survey measured children when they were 6-7 years of age. Based on the comparison between children exposed to the earthquake and control children, it will be possible to understand whether and to what extent the effects of prenatal stress exposure persists through early childhood. Importantly, we will also investigate whether socioeconomic resources interact with stress exposure (for example, if wealthy families can compensate for this early shock, or if poverty exacerbates the negative impact of early stress exposure). The current preliminary research shows a substantial negative effect of prenatal stress exposure in early childhood. The survey is planned to be the first step in a longitudinal assessment of the consequences of early stress exposure over the entire individual life course.
