Auditory Processing Impairments Under Background Noise in Children with Non-Syndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate

Cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) disorders are commonly occurring congenital malformations and hearing impairment is a very common co-morbidity. Most previous research has only focused on middle ear disorders and related auditory consequences in this group. Studies of higher level auditory status and central auditory processing abilities of this group have been unsystematic. The present study was conducted in order to objectively investigate the central auditory abilities in children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCLP). A structured behavioral central auditory test battery was conducted in a group of children with NSCLP and their age/sex matched normal peers. The following behavioral central auditory tasks were undertaken, including hearing in noise test (HINT), dichotic digits test (DDT), and gaps in noise test (GIN). Results showed that there were no significant group differences in DDT test, indicating that the binaural separation and integration abilities could be normal in children with NSCLP. However, the cleft group performed significantly poorer than their normal peers for each ear in HINT test under noise condition and GIN test, suggesting that the children with NSCLP could have impaired monaural low redundancy auditory processing ability, and at risk of temporal resolution disability.