Poorer Well-Being in Children With Misophonia: Evidence From the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents.

Objective: Misophonia is an unusually strong aversion to a specific class of sounds - most often human bodily sounds such as chewing, crunching, or breathing. A number of studies have emerged in the last 10 years examining misophonia in adults, but little is known about the impact of the condition in children. Here we set out to investigate the well-being profile of children with misophonia, while also presenting the first validated misophonia questionnaire for children. Materials and Methods: We screened 142 children (10-14 years; Mean 11.72 SD 1.12; 65 female, 77 male) using our novel diagnostic [the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents (SMS-Adolescent)]. This allowed us to identify a group of children already manifesting misophonia at that age - the first population-sampled cohort of child misophonics examined to date. Children and their parents also completed measures of well-being (for convergent validation of our SMS-Adolescent) and creative self-construct (for discriminant validation). Results: Data show that children with misophonia have significantly elevated levels of anxiety and obsessive compulsive traits. Additionally children with misophonia have significantly poorer life-satisfaction, and health-related quality of life. As predicted, they show no differences in creative self-construct. Conclusion: Together our data suggest the first evidence in population sampling of poorer life outcomes for children with misophonia, and provide preliminary convergent and discriminant validation for our novel misophonia instrument. Our data suggest a need for greater recognition and therapeutic outlets for adolescents with misophonia.

Wellbeing differences in children with synaesthesia: anxiety and mood regulation.

Synaesthesia is a neurodevelopmental trait that causes unusual sensory experiences (e.g., perceiving colours when reading letters and numbers). Our paper represents the first evidence that synaesthesia can impact negatively on children's well-being, and that there are likely to be important mental health co-morbidities for children with synaesthesia. We recruited 76 synaesthetes aged 6-10 years who had one of two types of synaesthesia (grapheme-colour synaesthesia and sequence-personality synaesthesia), and compared them to almost one thousand matched non-synaesthete controls. We tested children's wellbeing with two different measures, and found a significant relationship between synaesthesia and affect (i.e., mood), and also between synaesthesia and anxiety. Children with synaesthesia showed evidence suggesting significantly higher rates of Anxiety Disorder, and also displayed a type of mood-moderation in demonstrating fewer extremes of emotion (i.e., significantly fewer negative feelings such as fear, but also significantly fewer positive feelings such as joy). We discuss our results with reference to the emotional moderation of alexithymia (the inability to recognize or describe one's own emotions), and to a set of known links between alexithymia, anxiety, autism and synaesthesia.

Personality profile of child synaesthetes.

Previous research into personality and synaesthesia has focused on adult populations and yielded mixed results. One particular challenge has been to distinguish traits associated with synaesthesia, from traits associated with the ways in which synaesthetes were recruited. In the current study we addressed recruitment issues by testing randomly sampled synaesthetes, and we looked particularly at synaesthesia in childhood. Our child synaesthetes were identified by a screening program across 22 primary schools in the South East of England (n = 3387; children aged 6 to 10 years old). This identified two types of synaesthete (grapheme-colour synaesthesia and sequence-personality synaesthesia), and we tested their personalities using both child-report and parent-report measures. We found strong support for synaesthesia being associated with high Openness to Experience, a personality trait linked to intelligence and creativity. Both synaesthesia subtypes showed this feature, supporting previous research in adults (1-3). We additionally found low Extraversion in grapheme-colour synaesthetes and high Conscientiousness in sequence-personality synaesthetes. We discuss our results with reference to earlier recruitment issues, and as to how perceptual differences such as synaesthesia might link to trait-differences in personality.

Numeracy skills in child synaesthetes: Evidence from grapheme-colour synaesthesia.

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is a neurological trait that causes lifelong colour associations for letter and numbers. Synaesthesia studies have demonstrated differences between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes in ways that extend beyond synaesthesia itself (e.g., differences in their cognition, personality, and creativity). This research has focused almost exclusively on adult synaesthetes, and little is known about the profiles of synaesthetic children. By and large, findings suggest advantages for synaesthetes (e.g., Chun & Hupé, 2016; Havlik, Carmichael, & Simner, 2015; Rothen, Meier, & Ward, 2012; Rouw & Scholte, 2016; Simner & Bain, 2018) although differences in mathematical ability are unclear: some research indicates advantages (e.g., Green & Goswami, 2008) whilst others suggest difficulties (e.g., Rich et al., 2005). In the current study, we tested numerical cognition in a large group of children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Synaesthetes with coloured numbers showed advantages over their peers in their sense of numerosity, but not in their curriculum mathematics ability. We discuss how our findings speak to models for synaesthesia, to methodologies for assessing number cognition (e.g., dot numerosity tasks), and to the wider educational practice of using coloured number-tools in schools (e.g., Numicon; Oxford University Press, 2018).

Do the Colors of Educational Number Tools Improve Children's Mathematics and Numerosity?

This study examined how colored educational tools improve children's numerosity ("number sense") and/or mathematics. We tested children 6-10 years (n = 3,236) who had been exposed to colored numbers from the educational tools Numicon (Oxford University Press, 2018) or Numberjacks (Ellis, 2006), which map colors to magnitudes or Arabic numerals, respectively. In a free association task pairing numbers with colors, a subset of children spontaneously provided colors matching one of these schemas. These children, who had internalized Numicon (colored magnitude), showed significantly better numerosity but not mathematics compared to peers. There was no similar benefit from internalizing Numberjacks (colored numerals). These data support a model in which colored number tools provide benefits at different levels of numerical cognition, according to their different levels of cross-modal mappings.

Well-being measures for younger children.

Understanding variations in children's well-being is key to addressing inequalities. It is especially useful to understand children's own perspectives, although there is a lack of short questionnaires using simple language which can be administered to younger children (or in situations when testing-time is limited). Here we first present the VSWQ-C, a Very Short Well-Being Questionnaire for Children, which captures health-related quality-of-life in a brief questionnaire for both older and younger child responders. We provide preliminary validation evidence for this new measure from two English samples of children aged 6-7 and 9-10 years. Next, we also adapted an existing measure of children's emotional well-being (10-item Positive and Negative Effect Schedule for Children; Ebesutani et al., 2012), again to be suitable for a younger cohort. Our adaptation, the Definitional Positive and Negative Effect Schedule for Children (dPANAS-C), provides children as young as 6 with age-appropriate definitions of questionnaire vocabulary. We again present preliminary validation evidence from 9-10 year olds, as well as children 6-7 years (i.e., 1-2 years younger than the original version of this questionnaire had been psychometrically developed for). We looked too at demographic influences, and show that older children report greater well-being (in the VSWQ-C) as well as lower negative affect (in the dPANAS-C), but without gender differences. Our findings show that our tools eliciting self-reports of well-being are valuable and valid instruments for children as young as 6 years, with acceptable reliability and strong convergent validity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning in colour: children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits in vocabulary and self-evaluated reading.

Cognitive benefits associated with grapheme-colour synaesthesia in adults are well documented, but far less is known about whether such benefits might arise in synaesthetes as children. One previous study on a very small group of randomly sampled child synaesthetes found cognitive benefits in short-term memory and processing speed (the ability to quickly scan an array of images and discriminate between them), but was inconclusive for a test of receptive vocabulary. Using a stratified population sample (Growing Up in Scotland Project, Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Executive, 2007), we investigated the performance of a large cohort of child grapheme-colour synaesthetes using four literacy measures taken at age 10 years. These were three verbal comprehension measures (expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary and sentence comprehension) and one measure of academic self-concept in reading (plus one measure of academic self-concept in numeracy as a comparison). After controlling for demographic differences between groups, synaesthetes showed significantly enhanced performance for expressive and receptive vocabulary compared to their peers, but no benefits in sentence comprehension. Child synaesthetes also reported significantly higher academic self-concept for reading, but not for numeracy. Finally, we found that synaesthetes made significantly more progress than controls across the primary school years, although they began school with no a priori advantage. Our study provides powerful new evidence that children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show vocabulary and literacy differences, which we contextualize within a theory of synaesthetic development. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia'.

Is there a burden attached to synaesthesia? Health screening of synaesthetes in the general population.

Synaesthesia has long been considered a benign alternative form of perception most often associated with positive rather than negative outcomes. The condition has been associated with a variety of cognitive and perceptual advantages, including benefits in memory, processing speed, and creativity. It is not currently recognized in the DSM-IV. Recently, however, several studies have raised the question of a possible link between synaesthesia and clinical conditions. Here, we present the first large-scale screening of the general population in which we (1) objectively identified grapheme-colour synaesthetes and (2) elicited information from our participants about a range of clinical conditions. We compared the prevalence rates of these conditions in synaesthetes versus non-synaesthetes to establish whether any conditions were found at a higher rate among synaesthetes. In our initial study, screening 3,742 people (95 synaesthetes and 3,647 controls), we found initially that grapheme-colour was significantly comorbid with two conditions (anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder). In our second study, screening a new population of 120 synaesthetes and 166 non-synaesthetes, we replicated our finding that grapheme-colour synaesthesia is comorbid with anxiety disorder. At the same time, we also addressed a methodological concern that likely elevated rates of OCD in Study 1. We consider the aetiology of synaesthesia to determine whether there may be a shared genetic or neurological basis with anxiety disorder, and we question the status of synaesthesia within a mental health framework.

Does synaesthesia age? Changes in the quality and consistency of synaesthetic associations.

Developmental grapheme-colour synaesthesia is a rare condition in which colours become automatically paired with letters or digits in the minds of certain individuals during childhood, and remain paired into adulthood. Although synaesthesia is well understood in younger adults almost nothing is known about synaesthesia in aging. We present the first evidence that aging desaturates synaesthetic colours in the minds of older synaesthetes, and we show for the first time that aging affects the key diagnostic measure of synaesthesia (consistency of colours over time). We screened ~ 4000 members of the general population to identify grapheme-colour synaesthetes, targeting both younger and older adults. We found proportionally fewer older than younger synaesthetes, not only because fewer older people self-reported the condition, but because fewer also passed the objective diagnostic test. We examined the roots of this apparent decline in grapheme-colour synaesthesia, finding that the internal mental colours of synaesthetes become less saturated in older subjects, and importantly, that low-saturated colours are linked with test-failure. We discuss what these findings mean for a novel field of aging and synaesthesia research, in terms of the lifespan development of synaesthesia and how best to diagnose synaesthesia in later life.

Measuring the combined risk to young children's cognitive development: an alternative to cumulative indices.

In studies of child development, the combined effect of multiple risks acting in unison has been represented in a variety of ways. This investigation builds upon this preceding work and presents a new procedure for capturing the combined effect of multiple risks. A representative sample of 2,899 British children had their cognitive development measured at 36 and 58 months of age along with 10 potential risks during this period of development. Comparing a cumulative index of these risks against the previously undocumented alternative of confirmatory factor analysis using formative measurement, this study found differences favouring the factor analysis. The factor analysis procedure demonstrated greater predictive power of children's cognitive development while it systematically tested two of the assumptions implicit in cumulative risk indices.