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Infant cognitive home environment as a moderator for the association of prenatal lead on child language

Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Exposure to lead during early life, including in pregnancy, is toxic to neurodevelopment. Though public health initiatives have resulted in an overall reduction in lead exposure levels, lead remains a significant environmental hazard, requiring innovative efforts to mitigate the burden of early life lead. This study explored whether positive postnatal social experiences in the forms of positive caregiving and a rich cognitive home environment moderate the associations of prenatal lead on child neurodevelopmental outcomes including language skills, effortful control, and executive function skills. We leverage an analytic sample (N = 107) drawn from a prospective cohort of mother-infant dyads. Prenatal lead was measured from maternal urine, positive caregiving from observational methods, and cognitive home environment from a validated questionnaire. Results reveal a negative association of prenatal lead on child language when the cognitive home environment in infancy was poor (β=-0.32, p = 0.04) but not when the cognitive home environment in infancy was rich (β=0.20, p = 0.16). This buffering effect was not observed for the child outcomes of effortful control or executive function skills. Our results encourage future research into the provision of a rich cognitive home environment as a means of mitigating the detrimental effects of prenatal lead exposure on early child language skills.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuro.2025.04.010
Authors: Amanda C. Wylie, Michael T. Willoughby, Rebecca C. Fry, W. Roger Mills-Koonce, Sarah J. Short, Cathi B. Propper
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,030
OpenAlex ID: W4409717130
FWCI: 0.793
Cites: 97
Cited by: 2
Related to: 10