Crossmodal temporal processing acuity in children with oral clefts.

Objective: We have previously found that, in children with certain oral clefts, the rate of sequential information processing is significantly impaired in vision and tactile somatosensation but not so clearly in audition. Here, we studied crossmodal functions by investigating temporal processing acuity of cleft children with audiovisual, audiotactile, and visuotactile tasks.

Participants: Temporal processing acuity was studied in 10-year-old children, 19 with cleft lip with or without cleft palate and 38 with cleft palate or submucous cleft palate.

Design: Children estimated whether brief stimuli of two concurrent three-stimulus sequences, each in a different modality, were simultaneous or not when the stimulus interval varied adaptively. The 8-millisecond stimuli were flashes in vision, tone bursts in audition, and solenoid touches of a finger in somatosensation.

Results: The group with cleft lip with or without cleft palate performed better than the group with cleft palate or submucous cleft palate in audiovisual temporal processing acuity, but the group's superiority was not statistically significant in audiotactile or visuotactile temporal processing acuity.

Conclusions: Audiovisual crossmodal sequential information processing is probably impaired in some cleft children in the group with cleft palate or submucous cleft palate. Our results suggest further studies on the audiovisual capacities of children with cleft.