Providing support to school children with hyperacusis

Hyperacusis is described as abnormally sensitive hearing in which normally tolerable sounds are perceived as excessively loud (Stach, 1997). It is not associated with unusually low (good) thresholds for detecting sounds. In other words, the absolute threshold, as measured by the pure-tone audiogram, does not indicate hypersensitivity to very weak sounds. Rather, hyperacusis is manifested by aversive reactions to sounds that are clearly audible but would not normally lead to aversive reactions in most people. Several authors distinguish between hyperacusis (hypersensitivity to sound in general), misophonia (dislike of certain sounds) and phonophobia (fear of certain sounds) (Jastreboff and Jastreboff, 2006; Zarchi et al, 2010). However, the distinction of hyperacusis from phonophobia and misophonia is not well established in the literature (Andersson et al, 2002).