I have coined a term, on my own, for a certain subset of the kids I see in Occupational Therapist (OT). I call them "ear infection kids". I can tell within a couple of minutes of first seeing them. They are generally normal intelligence, hyper, underresponsive to stimuli, delayed language (especially receptive), impulsive, some fine motor delays that are generally attributable to poor attention. I am generally right about 80-90 % of the time. Sometimes I get kids with these symptoms and they've never had an ear infection in their life, have beautiful ear drums, no allergies. In that case, I have no idea of the origin, but the large, large majority of these kids have an extensive history of ear infections and tubes.
I have many theories on why all of these symptoms go together, possible the underlying allergies that cause all the ear infections. Histamine affects attention and alertness.
Sound, and the ability to process it correctly affects MUCH more than just language skills. Sound is the one sense that tells you about your surroundings, 360 degrees, both near and far. No other sense gives you as much information about your world as sound. Half of your senses only tell you about YOU and not about your world and the people and things in it. Touch is only near, vision is only when and where you can see, taste is only in your mouth, our noses are relatively weak, but generally will only tell us very near information. Sound tells us whether or not Mom is mad at us by her tone of voice, that there's a thunderstorm or car coming, how big the room is, how near and where things are, and much, much more. It is very important for making us feel safe, as it gives information about our surroundings. A disruption in this causes many kids to be hypervigilant and unable to read cues from the world.
I could go on and on. I have my own "ear infection kid", my 6 year old, and it can be very frustrating for him and the rest of the family. I just wanted to share the widespread effect of the ear infections. It goes way beyond language.