Improving the Measurement of Environmental Sensitivity in Children and Adolescents: The Highly Sensitive Child Scale–21 Item Version

Abstract

Children differ in their sensitivity to positive and negative environmental influences, which can be measured with the Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) scale. The present study introduces the HSC-21, an adaptation of the original 12 item scale with new items and factor structure that are meant to be more informative than the original ones. The psychometric properties of the HSC-21 were investigated in 1,088 children across Belgium and the Netherlands, including child and mother reports. Results showed evidence for (a) bifactor model with a general sensitivity factor and two specific factors (i.e., Ease of Excitation–Low Sensory Threshold and Aesthetic Sensitivity); (b) (partial) measurement invariance across gender, developmental stage, country, and informants; (c) moderate child–mother agreement; (d) good reliability; (e) normally distributed item scores; and (f) meaningful associations with personality and temperament across both samples. No evidence was found for HSC-21 as a moderator in the relationship between parenting and problem behaviors.

Family context in association with the development of child sensory processing sensitivity.

“…Furthermore, we note that the original 12-item HSC (Pluess et al, 2018), although proved effective in capturing children’s environmental sensitivity (e.g., Pluess et al, 2018; Pluess & Boniwell, 2015; Slagt et al, 2018), have certain limitations. For example, this questionnaire had more items measuring children’s negative emotionality in response to negative stimuli (e.g., “My child finds it unpleasant to have a lot going on at once”; “Loud noises make my child feel uncomfortable”), but fewer items that capture children’s other critical traits associated with SPS, such as deeper and thorough cognitive processing, the awareness to other’s emotional states, in addition to their positive emotional responses to positive stimuli (see an updated 21-item SPS survey: Weyn et al, 2020). As such, the laboratory observation may at least complement the survey.…”

“…As a final goal of the study, we sought to operationalize child SPS via a behavioral rating system. To our knowledge, the vast majority of research to date has measured SPS via questionnaires (e.g., 27-item Highly Sensitive Person scale; e.g., Booth et al, 2015; the 12-item Highly Sensitive Child [HSC] scale, Pluess et al, 2018; Slagt et al, 2018; 21-item Highly Sensitive Child Scale; Weyn et al, 2020), with only a few studies utilizing behavioral observation in children (Lionetti et al, 2019) and adults (Andeweg et al, 2021). With regard to measuring child SPS, Lionetti et al (2019) designed a novel coding system according to the theoretical meaning of SPS and applied their system to Lab-TAB episodes (e.g., stranger approach; Goldsmith et al, 1999).…”

Beyond the diathesis‐stress paradigm: Effect of the environmental sensitivity × pubertal tempo interaction on depressive symptoms

“…Previous studies that used large samples of children and adolescents often measured Environmental Sensitivity, which was observed as temperament or personality traits . While difficult temperament and negative emotionality have traditionally been considered as temperamental susceptibility factors, several recent studies have focused on sensory-processing sensitivity, which represents the temperament/personality aspect of Environmental Sensitivity (Pluess et al, 2018;Pluess et al, 2020;Weyn et al, 2021).…”

For Better, For Worse, or Both? Testing Environmental Sensitivity Models with Parenting at the Level of Individual Families

“…These two parenting dimensions have also been used in prior differential parenting studies (e.g., Slagt et al, 2016;Weyn et al, 2021). Moreover, recently it has been gained attention that one's environmental sensitivity might not generalize to different outcomes (Belsky et al, 2021).…”