NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children from urban areas who are exposed to a high level of violence may have lower IQ scores and a lower reading ability than their peers, researchers report.

"The findings suggest that violence exposure may be associated with actual impairments in academic ability and learning potential, even in the absence of distress," write lead study author Dr. Virginia Delaney-Black of the Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, and her colleagues.

To investigate, the researchers studied 299 urban first-grade children and their caregivers. They assessed the children's reading ability and IQ, and the relationship of these variables to the children's violence exposure.

Overall, the children reported high levels of exposure to community violence and trauma-related distress, the investigators report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

For example, roughly 85% of the 6- to 7-year olds said they had heard guns being shot at least once in their life, nearly 80% said they had seen somebody get beat up, and almost one-quarter said they had seen someone get stabbed. Furthermore, almost 4 out of every 10 children said they worry in class "some of the time" or "a lot of the time" about people being shot.

High levels of this type of exposure to community violence were associated with lower IQ scores, the researchers report. In fact, a mathematical equation of this relationship predicted that children with the highest level of exposure to violence and trauma-related distress would score 7.5 points lower on their IQ tests than children who reported the lowest level of exposure and distress. High levels of trauma-related distress, however, were not associated with lower IQ scores, the results show.

"This finding suggests that reported violence exposure might be associated with negative academic outcomes, whether or not children are subjectively distressed from the exposure," the authors write.

On the other hand, both community violence exposure and trauma-related distress were related to the children's scores on reading achievement tests. Children who report the highest levels of trauma-related distress--such as in-class worries--were mathematically predicted to score 9.8 points lower on a test of early reading ability than those who report the lowest level of trauma-related distress.

Both of these findings remained true when the investigators took into consideration the child's home environment, the caregiver's verbal ability, the child's gender, the family's socioeconomic status and the child's level of prenatal alcohol exposure.

"If community violence exposure does in fact impair academic ability, efforts to identify factors predicting which urban children are or will be exposed to high levels of violence are needed," Delaney-Black and her team write.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 2002;156:280-285.

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