Speech delay in children found to be explained by ear infections

Ear infections in young children can lead to speech delays, a new study has found. In these children, it may also be difficult to detect changes in sound that might indicate a problem in the auditory processing center of the brain. Scientists at the University of Florida studied how a common childhood infection can affect speech. Experts believe these problems may worsen with age.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, early ear infections such as otitis media can potentially impair hearing by causing fluid to accumulate behind the eardrum and cause slower speech.

Researchers studied auditory processing and language development in 117 children ages 5 to 10 years, including children with and without a history of chronic ear infections. They found that children who had multiple ear infections before they were 3 years old had smaller vocabularies and had difficulty finding words that sounded similar.

Study co-author and University of California professor Susan Nittrouer, Ph.D., discussed the findings in a statement to Fox News.

“For most children, language development seems to happen so easily that it’s easy for us to lose sight of what a remarkable feat it is,” she noted. And ear infections are so common among babies and toddlers that it’s easy to view them as completely harmless “

The study revealed “two new discoveries.” The first is that ear infections are associated with a deterioration in the ability to recognize patterns in the acoustic signals present in speech.

“If a child does not have access to enough auditory information—which happens during temporary periods of hearing loss due to ear infections—the development of the auditory pathways is delayed and these listening abilities do not develop as expected,” said Susan Nittrouer.

The second finding implied that poor acoustic pattern recognition impairs children’s ability to identify specific speech sounds, including elements such as syllables.

“This is a major discovery,” says Nittrouer. “In the early stages of language acquisition, children do not have acute sensitivity to phonological structure—the individual sounds of speech.” She added: “But as they get older, the language they encounter, especially at school, becomes more complex and increasingly dependent on that level of language structure and the child’s ability to accurately and quickly recognize individual speech sounds in words.” .

This means that children who are delayed and have difficulty with their language development will have “more severe difficulties” as they get older, the researcher said.

“Contrary to the idea that a child will overcome or outgrow the effects of early ear infections, these effects may actually worsen,” she warns.

Pediatric otolaryngologist Cedars Sinai Guerin Abhita Reddy, in an interview with Fox News, emphasized that, in her opinion, the study was “not sufficiently developed.”

“Very few respondents were studied in the experiment, and yet general conclusions were drawn from them,” the doctor from Los Angeles explained her point of view, “often the conclusions can be easily distorted due to confounding of variables.”

Identifying patients who had ear infections was “even more concerning,” Reddy said, because the authors studied patients who had never had ear tubes placed.

“They didn’t mention whether the patient had ear tubes during the experiment, how many sets they had, or what the indications were for their use,” she points out.

The specialist said she doesn’t think parents should draw any conclusions from the study, and she doesn’t believe the study will impact the future of ENT care.

“We know that recurrent acute otitis media in some patients can be caused by dysfunction of the eustachian tube (the tube in our body that connects the middle ear space to the back of the nose), which if not treated early can lead to lifelong problems with hearing in the form of conductive hearing impairment (the ability of sounds to be transmitted through the auditory nerve),” explained Abhita Reddy.