The study found that the children exposed to domestic violence performed worse than the control group on all measures of reading and phonological awareness. The most obvious explanation of these findings is that the stress of the violent home interferes with children’s reading development. Studies of the effects of stress on learning have found that extreme levels of stress-induced glucocorticoids negatively impact cognitive processes. Chronic stress seems to cause more cognitive deficits than acute short-term stress. Another explanation is that mothers who are dealing with domestic violence are less available to help their children in their school work. Future research should provide empirical data related to causal factors. Forty children, ages 6 to 9 years, were divided into a control (nonviolent home) group and a group with children exposed to domestic violence, based on their mothers’ responses on the revised Conflict Tactics Scales. The groups were matched according to age, gender, nonverbal IQ, and socioeconomic status. In addition to the revised Conflict Tactics Scales, two other questionnaires were administered to the mothers of the children: the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist. The children’s testing protocol measured nonverbal IQ; hearing; reading mastery; and phonological processing skills related to awareness of speech sounds, memory of those sounds, and rapid automatized naming. 5 tables and 42 references