Auditory processing, co-morbidities, and parental report of sleep disturbance in children with auditory processing disorder (APD).

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the prevalence of sleep disturbance and its relationship with auditory processing (AP) and co-morbidities in children diagnosed with auditory processing disorder (APD).

METHODS

Data from 109 children (Males = 59, Females = 50) with mean non-verbal intelligence quotient (NVIQ) of 89.44 (SD:18.16), aged between 6 and 16 years (mean: 10 years 7 months; SD: 2 years 9 months) with a diagnosis of APD were analysed. Participants performed ≤1.33 SD below the mean in two or more out of five SCAN-3 diagnostic APD tests that included 'Filtered Words' (FW), 'Auditory Figure Ground 0 dB' (AFG0), 'Competing Words-Directed Ear' (CW-DE), 'Competing Sentences' (CS) and 'Time Compressed Sentences' (TCS). Concern about sleep in addition to other symptoms and medical history were documented from structured parental history sheet which forms part of the routine APD assessment. Language impairment (LI), attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and anxiety were evaluated using the 'Children's Communication Checklist-2' (CCC-2), 'Swanson Nolan and Pelham rating scale' (SNAP-IV) and 'Anxiety Scale for Children-Autism Spectrum Disorder' (ASC-ASD) respectively.

RESULTS

Sixty children had sleep disturbance, a prevalence of 55% (95% CI 45.2%-64.6%). The two groups of APD children, with (n = 49) and without sleep (n = 60) disturbance, did not vary in their auditory processing abilities. The sleep disturbed group had significant issues with pragmatic language impairment, hyperactivity/impulsivity, oppositional defiant symptoms and anxiety compared to the group without sleep disturbance when they were analysed separately. After the variables were considered in step wise fashion in binary logistic regression analyses, only pragmatic language impairment and anxiety predicted sleep disturbance (p < .01).

CONCLUSION

In APD the prevalence of sleep disturbance is high, justifying screening within a transdisciplinary APD assessment protocol. Sleep disturbance in APD is predicted by pragmatic language impairment and anxiety, but not by ADHD symptoms or ODD.