Temperament Development During the First Year of Life in a Sample of Patients with Hearing Impairment Who Participated in the Infants Screening Program in a Single Center in Southern Italy: A Cross-Sectional Study

Highlights: What are the main findings? The development of temperament in the newborn and its interaction with listening skills is a complex process and its evaluation requires a longer observation time for the child than a year of life. What is the implication of the main finding? The QUIT questionnaire proved to be a more effective tool for raising parents’ awareness of children’s behavioral and cognitive problems than for drawing a behavioral profile. This study suggests the need for a multidisciplinary approach in the evaluation of newborns with hearing loss. Background/Objectives: Temperament is an innate personality trait, influenced by genetic, biological, and environmental factors. Hearing loss, particularly during the critical period of auditory development, can influence cognitive and temperamental development. This study aims to assess the impact of hearing loss on temperamental development in infants aged between 1 and 12 months. Methods: A cross-sectional study of a sample of 132 pediatric patients from the infant hearing screening program was conducted from June 2023 to June 2024. The infants were divided into two groups based on hearing status and the presence of risk factors; cognitive and temperamental parameters were assessed using the QUIT questionnaire. Results: No significant differences were found between infants with and without hearing loss when also considering the infants without risk factors. Normal temperament was found in infants with and without hearing loss, considering both risk and non-risk factors. Finally, no relationship between hearing loss degree and temperament type, considering both the absence and presence of risk factors, was observed. Conclusions: In the early months of an infant’s life, hearing loss does not appear to significantly affect temperamental development. Only through the monitoring of these hearing-impaired infants to detect more severe hearing loss and/or in the presence of other risk factors can deviant development be hypothesized. In this regard, multidisciplinary evaluations may be crucial for the early detection and correction of dysfunctional behaviors.