Hyperacusis in Children: A Preliminary Study on the Effects of Hypersensitivity to Sound on Speech and Language

Abstract

There is a growing awareness that children may experience hyperacusis, a condition that is often associated with behavioral and developmental disorders. This preliminary study was aimed to investigate the effects of hyperacusis alone on various components of speech and language in children without developmental disorders. This study was conducted on 109 children aged between 4 and 7 years attending kindergarten and primary school. Hyperacusis was assessed through behavioral observation of children and questionnaires for parents. Different components of speech and language were assessed through specific tests. Hyperacusis was diagnosed in fifteen children (13.8%); ten (66.7%) were attending primary school and five (33.3%) kindergarten. A significant difference between children with and without hyperacusis was found for tests evaluating the average number of words in a sentence and phonemic fluency; older children appeared to have more difficulties. Several differences in education profiles were found: parents of children with hyperacusis spent less time with their children compared to parents of children without hyperacusis. Our preliminary results suggest some difficulties in lexical access and the use of shorter sentences by children with hypersensitivity to sound; however, the small size of our sample and the largely unknown interactions between hyperacusis and developmental disorders suggest caution when interpreting these results. Further studies on larger samples are necessary to gain additional knowledge on the effects of hyperacusis on speech and language in children without developmental disorders.

Hyperacusis in children: a scoping review

“…There were also cases of a 21-month-old female [29], a 6-year-old male [2, case 1], a 7-year-old female [41], a 12-year-old male [45], and a 15-year-old male [40]. The remaining records included both males and females, and reported age ranges of 4-7 years [46] [28] specified age at hyperacusis onset and that it was gradual in all 412 cases of the sample. Of the ten case studies included in this review, six were male [2,30,35,36,40,45] and four were female children [29,37,41,38].…”

“…Two records [2,37] described fear as a reaction. Others included symptoms such as sweaty palms, shaking, palpitations [43], headache, change in mood or facial expression [35], urinary incontinence, grinding one's teeth, freezing, distress [33], running away [31,37,40], hiding [31], cringing, arching of the back [38], 'going into meltdown' [2], hyperactivity in noisy environments [46], or the child throwing themselves to the floor [40].…”

“…O'Reilly et al [38] used the William's Syndrome Questionnaire by Klein et al [51] to assess hyperacusis, providing no further information on the questionnaire items used. Ghandizeh et al [37] specified use of a hyperacusisspecific parent-completed Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), [46] used a questionnaire which he adapted from the questions previously used in Coelho et al [44,52]. The adapted version used in Ralli et al [46] had four multiple choice items.…”

Clinical and genetic approach to the dysmorphic child

“…The pediatri-tion of the disease, knowing that even without a diagnostic label, the single problems can be faced in the same way. (18,20,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26). At this point the pediatrician should inform the parents about the limits of the diagnostic process, in fact his suspicion could be erroneous or else it isn't possible to draw up a perfect diagnosis (13).…”

“…Table 2. The clinical and genetic characteristics of the most common genetic syndromes (7,8,13,23,25,29,(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46). Tarani et al…”