This paper examines the cognitive and neuropsychological functioning of children who were
in utero to age 15 months at the time of the Chornobyl disaster and were evacuated to Kyiv
from the 30-kilometer zone surrounding the plant. Specifically, we compared 300 evacuee
children at ages 10–12 with 300 non-evacuee Kyiv classmates on objective and subjective
measures of attention, memory, and school performance. The evacuee children were not
significantly different from their classmates on the objective measures (grades; Symbolic
Relations subtest of the Detroit Test; forms 1 and 2 of the Visual Search and Attention Test;
Benton Form A; Trails A; Underline the Words Test) or on most of the subjective measures
(the attention subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist completed by mothers; the attention
items of the Iowa Conners Teacher's Rating Scale; mother and child perceptions of school
performance). The one exception was that 31.3% of evacuee mothers compared to 7.4% of
classmate mothers indicated that their child had a memory problem. However, this
subjective measure of memory problems was not significantly related to neuropsychological
or school performance. No significant differences were found in comparisons of evacuees
and classmates who were in utero at the time of the explosion, children from Pripyat vs. other
villages in the 30-kilometer zone, and children manifesting greater generalized anxiety. For
both groups, children with greater Chornobyl-focused anxiety performed significantly worse
than children with less Chornobyl-focused anxiety on measures of attention. The results thus
fail to confirm two previous reports that relatively more children from areas contaminated
by radiation had cognitive deficits compared to controls. Possible reasons for the differences
in findings among the studies are discussed.