Brainwave findings suggest children with ADHD symptoms may respond more strongly to unexpected sounds in preschool, but less strongly in later childhood.
Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may hear the world differently at different stages of development, according to a study published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that preschoolers with elevated ADHD symptoms reacted more strongly than their peers to unexpected tones, while older children with ADHD showed the opposite pattern and responded less strongly to the same kind of sounds.
The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that ADHD is not only about attention and impulse control, but also about how the brain handles basic sensory information. For parents and caregivers, that matters because difficulty filtering out noise can make classrooms, play spaces and home routines feel more overwhelming for some children. Earlier studies have also linked ADHD to differences in auditory processing, including atypical brain responses on electroencephalogram tests and weaker measures of selective attention in school-age children.
In the new study, Marija Pranjić, Jirapat Likitlersuang and Anne B. Arnett examined two separate age groups rather than following the same children over time. The younger group included 115 children aged two and a half to five years, 64 of whom showed elevated ADHD symptoms. The older group included 71 children aged seven to eleven years, including 53 with an ADHD diagnosis. All of the children listened passively to repeated tones while researchers recorded brain activity through EEG sensors placed on the scalp.
The experiment focused on two automatic brain reactions. One, known as mismatch negativity, appears when the brain detects an unexpected sound pattern. The other reflects a novelty response to unusual sounds. In the younger children, those with elevated ADHD symptoms showed a larger mismatch negativity response and less reduction in brain activity over repeated sounds, suggesting weaker habituation. In the older group, however, children with ADHD showed a smaller mismatch negativity response than typically developing children, and the study did not find the same habituation differences.
Researchers said the shift may point to changing patterns in auditory processing as children grow, although the study cannot show that the same child moves from one pattern to the other. Because the work was cross-sectional, it does not answer whether the differences reflect delayed maturation or a separate developmental pathway. Even so, the results support the view that ADHD involves more than higher-level executive function problems alone. Sensory processing may also shape how children experience sound, focus their attention and manage distraction, and future longitudinal studies may help clarify whether these brain responses could one day aid earlier identification or treatment planning.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical judgment, advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
