Breakthroughs in Auditory Processing: Retraining the Auditory System through Music and Sound

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The learning environment for the average student today is bursting with distracting, everyday noise. Overhead lights emit low buzzing sounds. Air conditioners, computers, traffic and construction noise, and voices in the cafeteria or gym classes bombard students’ brains and compete for their attention.  Many of us take for granted that we can filter out or otherwise ignore these distractions but many are simply unable to accomplish this sort of noise filtering.  Imagine what the world would be like if all that you perceived as ‘background’ noise was actually just as loud and just as commanding of your attention?The learning environment for the average student today is bursting with distracting, everyday noise.

Sound has a profound effect on living systems. Because sound goes directly into the body, it has the ability to nourish or depress the system. The vagus nerve, which connects the ear to the brain, also connects the ear to nearly every organ in the body . Have you ever gone into a teenager’s room, and felt like the music rattled you from head to toe? It did! Literally, inside and out.

The environment today is brimming with noise. This seemingly continuous barrage of environmental noise is a constant source of stress in an already stress-filled society.  Many studies have been done to understand the effect of noise on people and nature. In 1975, a study done by researcher Ariline Bronzaft found that children on the train track side of a New York public school lagged a year behind in learning to read when compared to their classmates on the other side of the building. Other studies have found the same learning difficulties for children living near airports.

Yet, the brain needs sound . A diet of healthy sound can have amazing effects on our learning, communication, emotions, relationships, sleep, coordination, creativity, organization and general sense of well-being.

How Does The Auditory System Work?
In order to think about and understand language, an auditory stimulus (sound) has to be received by the outer ear and channeled through the middle and inner ear to the auditory nerve. The ear’s job at this point is hearing.

Once the signal is transferred from the inner ear to the auditory nerve, it goes on a journey through the brainstem and the brain on its way to the cortex where language is processed. The Central Auditory Nervous System (CANS), where this journey takes place, is an intricate system dedicated to dealing with auditory information.

When the signal gets to an area of the brain called Heschl’s Gyrus the transition from auditory processing to language processing begins. It is at this point that the brain begins to process the auditory signal as language.

The final leg of the journey sends the language signals to the cortex where the information is coded, organized, interpreted, and understood.

A central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) occurs when the auditory signal is received accurately by the ear, but becomes distorted, confused, or compromised in some way before it is received by the language area of the brain.

Common Symptoms of Central Auditory Processing Disorder

In more clinical terms, here are some symptoms that most literature on CAPD include:

  • About 75% are male
  • Normal hearing acuity
  • Difficulty following oral directions
  • Inconsistent response to auditory stimuli (the signal isn’t always confused, just sometimes)
  • Short attention span; fatigues easily during auditory tasks
  • Poor long and short term memory
  • May be looking at the speaker, but doesn’t appear to be listening
  • Trouble listening when there is background noise
  • Difficulty knowing where the sound is coming from
  • Difficulty with phonics, reading, or spelling; mild speech-language problems
  • Disruptive behaviors (distracted, impulsive, frustrated)
  • Says “Huh?” or “What?” Often asks for things to be repeated
  • History of ear infections

And even if there has been no professional diagnosis for a struggling child as yet, we both know that something doesn’t  have to be an identified “disorder” for the issue to be a genuine challenge for the student.

It’s Hard to Get the Message When You Have A Bad Connection

Perhaps the best way to understand a central auditory processing disorder in our “modern age” is to think about what it is like to be in an important conversation with a bad cell phone connection. You are having to listen extremely hard, and any extra noise around you (i.e. kids, traffic, etc.) becomes extremely irritating and hard to block out.

Because the signal is not clear, you miss part of what the speaker is saying and you find yourself saying, “What did you say?” and struggling to fill-in the gaps.

You’re not exactly sure what the speaker said, but you don’t want to sound stupid or uninterested, so you make what you think is an appropriate response. Oops! That backfired. Now you have to explain about the bad connection and why you misinterpreted what they said and made an “off-the-wall” response.

You’re not quite understanding the speaker, yet when you have a clear connection, you really don’t have a comprehension problem.

It’s taking so much energy to keep up with this conversation, that you find your attention drifting. You’re feeling distracted and frustrated, and doggone it, important or not, you just want to get off the phone!

Luckily for cell phone users, the way to a better connection is to hang-up and dial again. But for students with CAPD, this is life.

Key Player on the Sensory Team
The auditory system is like the quarterback or the “captain” of the sensory team. It begins to function at 16 weeks in utero and has neuro-connections that allow the sensory team to work efficiently. When the auditory system is weak, it can affect the integration of information being fed to the brain and the nervous system by the other senses.

An inefficient auditory system can inhibit the development of strong listening skills. There is a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive. Listening is active and conscious and has a huge impact on learning . Inadequately developed listening skills can cause problems with information processing, attention, memory, concentration, relationships, motor coordination, language learning and communication.

The ear is tied-in to the vestibular system (balance and movement), so coordination, posture, and sensorimotor integration can be affected by a weak auditory system. Through improved listening, we see improved spatial awareness which supports organization; better body control for sitting in a chair and posture; improved eye-hand coordination for writing and improved motor coordination and performance in sports.

A well-functioning ear is like a battery which changes sound waves into electrical waves. These electrical waves stimulate the cortex (the thinking and learning part of the brain). Healthy sounds are nutrients that can stimulate the middle ear and charge the nervous system .

Because the auditory system has strong interconnections on multiple levels across both sides of the brain and throughout the body, it can impact how energized or de-energized we feel, how well we process information for learning, and how alert and organized we are.

Just as a healthy diet contributes to physical and mental health, a healthy sound environment makes healthier, more available learners.

What if you found a program for students that would result in:

  • Better articulation
  • Improved sleep
  • Better ability to follow directions
  • Improved auditory comprehension
  • Improved vocal quality
  • Better organization
  • Improved social interaction
  • Increased balance and coordination
  • Improved language
  • Increased attention
  • Improved communication
  • Reduced sound sensitivity
  • Increased frustration tolerance
  • Increased learning

Sounds like an Infomercial, doesn’t it? Would you buy?

Believe it or not, these are just a few of the results we are seeing from music and sound stimulation programs that we have added to our “therapy toolbox” over the last few years. Through the work of dedicated pioneers in the field, a whole new world of listening, communication, and success has been opened to our students.

Music and Sound Therapy
Over the years at the Learning Center, we have found that the use of music has been a tremendous tool for opening the door to learning and communication . For students that were shut-down to learning because of constant failure, music was an avenue to renew hope and interest. Our interest in music therapy as a gateway with emotionally-blocked students gradually led us to the use of music and sound stimulation to strengthen and re-train the auditory system for learning, communication, comprehension, and language.

The therapeutic use of music has long been scientifically supported. In the mid-1900s Dr. Alfred Tomatis began his work with the therapeutic application of sound to treat specific symptoms and behaviors.

Auditory stimulation and training has been effective in treating a variety of disorders, including auditory processing disorders, speech and language disorders, learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorders, attention deficit disorders, and reading and spelling disorders.

The focus of auditory stimulation and training is on re-educating the ear and auditory pathways.

This is accomplished through the use of specially modified classical music and nature sounds CDs that stimulate the hearing mechanism to take in a full spectrum of sound frequencies. Because sound frequencies literally vibrate through our entire body, auditory re-training can result in positive changes physically, emotionally, and mentally.

As listening skills and the auditory system improve, many positive changes take place (take another look at the list on page one).

A Gentle, Powerful Therapy
Nourishing the auditory system with healthy sound through programs such as Samonas Sound Therapy, The Listening Program , and Advanced Brain Technologies’ Sound Health Series restores and supports the function of the auditory system.

We have found these to be tremendous tools in aiding the development of communication and learning with students of all ages with a variety of learning challenges; however, as one student pointed out, this “would be healthy for anyone, even if they didn’t have a problem.”

Our work with auditory stimulation and training has been exciting and inspiring. With these powerful tools, we are seeing dramatic changes occur in the lives of children, teens, and adults. This is by far the “gentlest” therapy we have ever prescribed, yet changes usually begin to be noticeable within two to three weeks and the impact has been unmistakable. One parent of a young teenager said, “If it wouldn’t embarrass my daughter to death, I’d call Oprah and tell her she needs to do a show on this!”

 

Smart but Struggling – How to Help a Child with Weak Learning Skills

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Smart but Struggling: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense!

Recently, we have had parent after parent calling and saying virtually the same thing:

“My child is bright. He’s a good kid and wants to do well, but he’s struggling in school. He doesn’t qualify for help but he tests below state standards. How can this be?”

What most people don’t know is that about 30% of the children in school today have some degree of difficulty with reading or learning. In spite of caring teachers, supportive parents, good intelligence, and motivation, many students experience academic frustrations as a result of weak or inefficient underlying reading and/or learning skills.

If a child doesn’t qualify for special help at school, does it mean there’s not a problem? Only about 5-9% of children are formally diagnosed with learning disabilities, so that leaves roughly 7 million students who struggle but don’t qualify for help.What to do your child struggles with reading or learning because of weak underlying reading or learning skills.

What does it look like for these kids?

Aaron was a very bright high school senior who wanted to go into pre-med in college. He was at the top of his class in physics and chemistry, but close to failing English and History. He had such weak auditory processing skills that listening in class was exhausting. His teachers reported that he often fell asleep during lectures. Aaron’s poor auditory processing also affected a key skill for sounding out unfamiliar words when reading. He could read, but not well, so he often failed to complete reading-related homework assignments. Because he could do well in some areas, people often misunderstood and thought that he was not trying hard or not motivated.

Mark, at 12 years old, was outgoing, friendly, and confident—that is until it came to school. Mark was a terrific athlete and built fantastic Lego structures. He got As in math except for word problems but was beginning to fall behind in his other classes. Mark was a very poor reader. He’d been able to compensate pretty well up until 7th grade, but the reading and writing demands in junior high were becoming too much to keep up with or talk his way out of.

Kelsey could read well but struggled to completely comprehend what she read so her test scores were inconsistent, making it look like she wasn’t studying. Her biggest challenge was with math, which made very little sense to her and caused her a great deal of anxiety.

How can my bright child have so much trouble in some areas? 


When smart children and teens struggle in school it is perplexing and frustrating to all involved. They often excel in some areas, but do very poorly in others.

  • Sam knows all the baseball stats but can’t memorize his math facts.
  • Keely is a smart and savvy soccer player but gets poor grades on tests.
  • Casey is witty and clever, but can’t follow 3 directions.
  • Michael excels in math but reads slowly and laboriously.
  • Justin can focus on video games for hours, but gets distracted immediately when reading or writing.

Comfortable, easy learning requires strong underlying learning skills. These include such things as:

  • Body and attention awareness and control
  • Memory
  • Auditory and visual processing (how the brain perceives and thinks about things we see and hear)
  • Phonemic awareness (the ability to think about the sounds in words and critical to success reading)
  • Language comprehension
  • Processing speed
  • Logic and reasoning, strategizing, and mental organization and flexibility.

Children who struggle in school typically have real strengths and weaknesses within their underlying learning skills. Since different types of tasks or activities are supported by different sets of learning skills, these students can easily show perplexing inconsistencies in their performance.

Our child is getting tutoring. Why aren’t things changing?

Using the analogy of a tree to represent learning, you can think of academic skills as the top of the tree and underlying learning skills as the roots and trunk. If the root system, or the underlying learning skills are weak the top of the tree, or the academics will be affected.

Traditional tutoring works at the top of the tree with the weak academic skills. This may be helpful to students at the moment but is a bit of a “band aide” approach as it is not addressing the real cause, or root, of the problem and will not provide a permanent solution.

So Does My Smart Child Just Have to Live With this?

The Good News is that the brain can change. While weak or inefficient underlying learning skills are not likely to self-correct with time, discipline, or even tutoring, the brain can be retrained to process information more effectively. Underlying learning skills can be developed through specific and intensive training so that underachieving and struggling learners can gain the success and independence they are capable of and deserve.

Students Who Used To Struggle

  • Aaron went through an intensive summer program to increase his auditory processing and reading skills. His energy, stamina, and confidence for listening, reading, and writing improved greatly. He is now in college with a pre-med major.
  • Mark went through a program to develop his phonemic awareness so that he could learn and use phonics for reading and spelling. His visual skills for reading were also developed so that he didn’t have to feel disoriented and overwhelmed when he looked at a page of text. Mark is now functioning well in a private high school and playing quarterback on the school football team.
  • Developing underlying processing and language comprehension skills has helped Kelsey to become much more consistent in her test scores and much less afraid of math. She can now understand and follow directions in class and do her math homework independently.

Many children cope with their underachievement by putting on an attitude of not caring and resisting help from parents, teachers, and clinicians at a learning or tutoring center. Success can change bad attitudes, though, and gradually, as the foundation of underlying processing/learning skills got stronger, students become more confident and engaged. Here’s one child’s thoughts:

“This has also made me a better person. I am now a more thoughtful person. Before I came I got bad grades. Now I have improved in all subjects. My grades before were Ds. Now they raised to As and Bs. It makes me feel special to be known as a smart kid to other people.”  Brett…5th Grade

Accessibility Apps Help Students With Dyslexia

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We need to remind ourselves that ‘Accessibility’ needn’t be a term reserved just for physically disabled. Those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities face real challenges navigating the world of printed words. It’s largely inaccessible to them because it’s often incomprehensible. However, new accessibility apps from Apple and others, are beginning to give these people the access that most of the rest of us tend to take for granted. While they may not have been the targeted market or driving force behind the design, it’s clear these apps benefit those with dyslexia and related disabilities.

Accessibility Apps help students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities overcome their learning problemsFor someone with Dyslexia, reading a simple paragraph or even a couple lines of instructions is a tedious and frustrating process. This makes everyday activities difficult and learning from textbooks or other dense, voluminous material is nearly impossible. Spelling and written expression can also be very difficult.

 Dyslexia does not impact intellectual ability but it will prevent these bright people from acquiring information as others do in the typical learning environment.

 So what do people who have dyslexia do when they encounter printed text? Sadly enough, some simply avoid it or give up. Others find or create methods to help them succeed.

Thanks to accessibility technologies built into Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac, more and more people with dyslexia and other disabilities are finding they can readily access the information in books, newspapers, websites, email, and more. Using devices to help people adapt the world to their needs is not a new paradigm, but having inexpensive, easy to use, readily available tools (these apps!) is what success is all about these days. Below I’ll highlight a few of my favorite apps for use on Apple devices. Visit iMore to find out about these and others from Apple. Of course there are plenty of more universally applicable educational tools and resources out there that have been around for years. I’ll mention some of them as well because of their proven positive impact.

Speak Selection
Speak Selection reads aloud any text highlighted on the iPhone or iPad. Having the words spoken really improves understanding of students. The app can even be set to highlight words as they’re read to help the reader follow along. We also use it to highlight text so the highlighted part can be read back again to the reader to aid in comprehension.

Dictation
The Dictation feature allows students to get their ideas out so they can freely and fully express themselves; returning later to work on fine-tuning the written script. Writing can be painfully frustrating for students with dyslexia since they often end up forgetting their overarching thought or stream of consciousness as they struggle with the task of spelling and writing individual words.

QuickType
iOS 8 brings with it the option to activate this feature — a predictive keyboard that gets smarter as you use it. It helps with poor spelling by suggesting words based on the first few characters.
With these types of integrated technologies and apps, people with disabilities can have access so they can readily use their creative and intellectual abilities rather than being held back by their disabilities.

Apple device users can also enjoy services offered by third-party apps developed with the Apple devices as the foundation.

One of these services, Bookshare, offers over 280,000 books that can be downloaded directly and read with text-to-speech. The combination of text-to-speech and highlighting greatly improves readability and comprehension for qualifying students. Thanks to a grant from the United States Department of Education Bookshare is free to U.S. students.

Voice Dream Reader is a super-cool text-to-speech app for iOS. It allows students to input text from a variety of sources (Bookshare, web, clipboard, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Project Gutenberg, etc.) Once the text is loaded, it can even be read with a number of different text-to-speech voices (albeit at additional cost). The app includes highlighting, note taking features, and students can customize the look of their text as well. This app is a great pairing with Bookshare for reading books on the go.

Another service, called Learning Ally provides human-narrated audio books that can also be downloaded to a wide variety of devices such as Android, not just Apple. Learning Ally is a national nonprofit with resources designed to support students with learning disabilities and their families. Of note, the highlighting of feature of this service is not word by word as in Bookshare and Kurzweil (see below), but rather is paragraph by paragraph.

Prizmo is an especially powerful app that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize and read back text in a matter of seconds from a picture of a text document. So if a student is having a tough time reading through something, they can take a picture and have Prizmo read it back to them. Though not the strongest OCR engine in the industry, it is ideal for use with mobile devices.

Individuals with dyslexia and other learning disabilities have already given these apps and services positive reviews – explaining that these apps level the playing field for them, and encouraging developers to come up with even more life-enabling tools. Hopefully, the increased focus on accessibility from sites such as iMore will help push innovation even further.

All the above are apps and services oriented to mobile users and more specifically Apple devices. With the school year already in swing, I’ll mention a number of other powerful applications and sites that are available for the home, office, and school and can be accessed and used across just about any platform, Mac or PC.

Kurzweil 3000
Kurzweil 3000 is a reading and writing program for scanned and digital documents so students can benefit from high quality text-to-speech and synchronized highlighting. Mrs. Kurzweil was actually the name of my sweet and wonderful teacher in first grade so I’m more than just partial to this one. Students can annotate documents with text notes, audio notes, highlighting and circle functions. Even test taking is simplified since students can fill in the blanks on documents – answering directly on the digital document. This powerful tool has additional writing help such as mapping and word prediction features mentioned above.

Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a fantastic free service providing video tutorials for students in just about any subject. Enthusiastic scientists and teachers walk students through difficult concepts step-by-step in a way that is easy to understand and follow. The video tutorials cover an enormous range of content ranging from algebra to zoology and is helpful for learning new subjects as well as reinforcing material that may not have been fully grasped in the classroom. And at the end of many lessons students can even take a short quiz to reassure themselves that they have understood the content. Visit Khan Academy at khanacademy.org.

The last items I want to share are devices that once again, help level the playing field for those with learning or hearing disorders.

Phones and tablets are convenient tools for recording classes and lectures but unless the speaker is consistently close to the device, the built-in microphone may do a poor job of isolating the speaker from surrounding noise. The resulting recording may be filled with background noice making it difficult to hear and virtually useless for those with hearing disorders. MightyMic from Ampridge is a discreet, compact microphone that plugs into the headphone jack on any portable device and then angled toward the part of the room that has the most important sounds to be captured. When recording in a classroom or lecture hall environment, it has the effect of reducing the nearby background noise resulting in capture of ideal recordings of the speaker.

The Sky Wifi Smartpen from Livescribe is a computerized pen for note taking. The way it works is that students take notes on special notebook paper their written notes are synchronized with an audio recorded from class. Revisiting this synchronized audio and written material helps students review and fill in gaps of information they may have missed. Many students within the spectrum of learning disabilities find it’s frustratingly easy to miss important content while trying to focus on writing everything down. Amazingly, the Sky Smartpen can also wirelessly synchronize notes to Evernote or even to other students who need audio and digital notes provided.

It bears repeating that while these tools and apps may not have been created specifically for those with dyslexia and related disabilities, the benefits for them are clear. What’s your experience? We hope you’ll share with us any discoveries you’ve made about technologies or resources that you’ve found helpful (or not!) for students facing learning challenges due to dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, or any other learning disability.

How Children with APD Become Masters of their Own Ears

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For many families, raising a child with APD or CAPD means coping, understanding, and finding the right accommodations to help the child throughout the day. No medication has been found to help, and so far cognitive research has not produced any promising treatments. However, for families that do not take “no” as an answer, there is still one course of treatment that carries promise.

Therapeutic Literacy Center is a small educational therapy center located in Solana Beach, California. The focuses is on addressing the root of an individual’s struggles and developing the building blocks of learning. Instead of providing an educational Band-Aid to get students through the day, we seek to help students develop the executive function, processing skills, and core learning skills they need to excel in life.

There is currently no one-size-fits-all approach to helping children with APD to improve their symptoms. For this reason, Therapeutic Literacy Center works individually with each child to create a step-by-step program of learning activities and games.

We help with:

  • Understanding speech in noisy environments
  • Discerning different sounds in speech
  • Learning to spell
  • Developing active listening skills
  • Enhancing executive function
  • Building memory for different sounds

A child’s brain is more elastic than that of an adult, meaning it is easier and more natural to learn unattained skills. As of now, Therapeutic Literacy Center has successfully brought 20 children out of special education and into the regular classroom. TLC also provides support for children enrolled in homeschool.

TLC is ideal for children who would otherwise require speech therapy, tutoring, and a variety of other treatments from multiple locations. The specialized one-on-one program approach covers every aspect of your child’s learning. If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, or struggles in school, but has not been diagnosed, or if your child suffers from multiple disorders, TLC may be the ideal space to seek treatment.

We would love to sit down with you and discuss hopes, expectations, struggles, and successes. Your story can help to illuminate your child’s strengths as well as areas in which we may focus our efforts. We are interested in the best outcome, whether that means developing valuable new skills or leaving special education behind. If you believe we could be of help to your child and family, we would love to meet you and talk further about how we can help you reach your goals.

Early Detection of Hearing Disabilities

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detecting hearing disorders in very young childrenEvery time my kids get a check-up, it strikes me that pediatricians are checking eyes and ears in the same way they’ve been checking for at least the last 50 years (yep, I just turned 50).  True, a general practitioner will typically only screen for evidence of deeper issues and then refer onward if something suspicious or ‘outside the normal range’ is found.  But in light of my 11 year old son being diagnosed with APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), it occurs to me that the current hearing testing conducted by schools and pediatricians is woefully inadequate because it is incapable of discovering the range of hearing disabilities we know to be present in the population today.  Instead, we end up waiting until these hearing disabilities manifest in children as inability to read, write, and learn at grade level, and often failing or borderline performance by older students who are unable to learn in a typical classroom environment and are likely suffering emotional and psychological harm.

To appreciate this difference let’s consider current vision testing. Children are asked to discern whether arrows are pointing up down or sideways, or whether a shape is a smooth circle or star with points, and whether one shape is bigger or smaller than another, and so on.  But what if the vision test merely involved flashing a dot in different areas of a screen and asking whether the person sees anything?  And they only need to answer Yes or No to determine vision health?   In that case, pretty much everyone except the most extreme visually disabled individuals would ‘pass’.  Fortunately that doesn’t happen and so we don’t have to wait until kids suffer numerous physical injuries from walking into tables and falling down steps, or flunk out of pre-school before we begin to suspect that there are vision problems.

Building blocks of speechSo why are we still simply asking kids to discern mere audiometric thresholds when we know that other attributes of sound such as rhythm, pitch, timbre, and localization are just as important to function well in our current environment?  The unfortunate truth is that the professional community cannot come to an agreed-upon set of cues that reflect appropriate hearing ability and fidelity.  Part of the frustration is that neurobiologists and neuropsychologists don’t really fully understand the mechanisms of how people hear and what the brain does with what the ear detects.  But the research is ongoing and our understanding continues to develop and deepen.  Findings in the last couple of years that I’ll share are truly exciting because they bring us closer to a time when some simple, early diagnostics will reveal a more detailed picture of a person’s hearing ability and alert parents and professionals of issues to be addressed early on in the child’s life.

A few years ago, studies by Ruggles, et.al. demonstrated quite elegantly the critical role of temporal cues on sound perception and analysis or decoding. What’s most exciting about the work is that they also designed and demonstrated a series of tests which detected temporal dysfunction.  Temporal cues are things like vowel sounds (long or short), articulation of consonants, stress or inflection in a word or phrase.  Researchers and clinicians have known for decades that temporal cues are important.  But reliable, definitive screening and diagnostic methods have been lacking.  The tests described in the Ruggles report were objective, uncomplicated, easy to grasp, and relatively easy to administer and interpret. In short, the team showed the feasibility and benefits of conducting more sophisticated auditory screening tests.

As parents and therapists, we’re always promoting awareness of the spectrum of hearing and learning deficits.  But this is the sort of work that helps arm us better to promote the need for developing and implementing proactive screenings that are reliable and feasible.  Now, ‘fast-forward’ a few years to September 2014 when another article caught my eye and it is exactly the kind of big news we need!  I say this because the research and its implications are so elegant that it’s easy for just about anyone to grasp the work and its implications.

Early Detection of Hearing Disabilities

Nina Kraus and her colleagues of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University study the changes in the brain that happen with auditory learning. The findings in some of their most recent work with very young children hint at another type of diagnostic for disabilities in speech processing.  The exciting thing here is that it’s for children that have not even begun to read or exhibit other higher level language skills yet!

Much of the laboratory’s work has centered on the idea that beat synchronization ability (i.e. matching a given rhythm or beat) is closely related to the ability to process temporal cues – just like the ability in encoding speech. In this way, poor neural precision may contribute to both rhythmic and phonological deficits.  Indeed, previous work has shown that beat synchronization and processing of speech have been linked to reading skills.  In their work published in September 2014, the group established links between beat synchronization and speech processing in children who have not yet begun to read. This is very exciting work because children this young are not often looked at for deficits in language development.

To do this, the researchers placed children in groups based on how well they could synchronize beating a drum in rhythm with the teacher.  It’s important to note that there were no differences in intelligence or vocabulary performance between the groups of synchronizers and non-synchronizers.

They recorded the brainwaves in response to specific syllable sounds like “ba” and “da”.  They also looked at brainwaves when the syllable sounds were mixed in with background noise to see if the children could discriminate the syllables despite the noise.  What they found was the children who could not synchronize well also did not perform as well on tests that measure abilities important for developing later reading and language language skills (for example, identifying rhyming words). They especially did not do well at distinguishing syllables played in background noise.  The children who were able to follow the beat successfully were not only better at discriminating melodies and rhythms in music, but they were able to process syllable sounds more precisely and performed better on the multiple tests of language abilities.

Although this summary may sound somewhat simplistic, the methods were rigorous and the results highly significant.  The results show beautifully that rhythmic ability is correlated with how precisely a child’s brain will decode speech syllables.  The findings also strongly indicate that a preschooler’s ability to follow a beat will predict how advanced their developing language skills are; that less developed skills could predict future reading disabilities.  To test this, they have set up a 5 year study to track the same children to see whether these early deficits predict reading and speech processing disorders.

What they find may mean that in the future, doctors and caregivers may have the means to assess the very young for risk of developing reading and related learning disabilities.  And intervention (such as music games to improve rhythmic perception) could in theory be highly successful since at such a young age children’s brains are most malleable.

Our job as parents, teachers, and caregivers is to continue promoting awareness of the spectrum of hearing disorders, and emphasize how important it is to recognize and identify them early on.  If we keep at it, then perhaps we won’t have to wait the typical 10 years it often takes for life science research to make it to the actual changes in the clinical and healthcare practices.  For more information check out the resources below.

References

  1. Normal hearing is not enough to guarantee robust encoding of suprathreshold features important in everyday communication. Ruggles D, Bharadwaj H, Shinn-Cunningham BG  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Sep 13; 108(37):15516-21. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3174666/
  2. Hearing Impairments HIdden in Normal Listeners. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. Sep 27, 2011; 108(39): 16139–16140. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182733/
  3. Woodruff Carr K, White-Schwoch T, Tierney A, Strait DL, Kraus N (2014). Beat synchronization predicts neural speech encoding and reading readiness in preschoolers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1406219111
  4. Kraus N, Slater J, Thompson E, Hornickel J, Strait D, Nicol T and White-Schwoch T (2014). Music enrichment programs improve the neural encoding of speech in at-risk children. Journal of Neuroscience. 34(36): 11913-11918.  http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/

Reading Depends On... from Lab of Nina Kraus

 

Auditory Connections – Is Your Child’s Learning struggle actually a Listening issue?

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If your child experiences reading difficulties,  you’ve likely been researching the issue hoping for understanding of their learning struggle.  If so, you may have become familiar with Auditory Connections - Is Your Child's Learning struggle actually a Listening issue?the link between auditory processing and reading.  

Indeed, you may already suspect that your child exhibits some level of disability in terms of auditory processing and are now trying to figure out  if:

1- the experts know enough about it to have developed successful therapies, and

2- whether your child is a good candidate for these therapies.

Studies are still being done, research articles published, and books are still being written that emphasize the importance of auditory processing in learning to read, communicating with oral and written language, and developing adequate social skills.  At TLC, I have seen this verified over and over in my clinical work with students.

As I have worked in this area, I have been continuously reminded of the wholeness of learning and of the learner. I have previous written about the auditory system, (“Breakthroughs in Auditory Processing” at www.learningdisability.com) and its connections not only with the language center of the brain, but with the vestibular system (our system of balance and movement), and the automatic functions of the body (respiratory, digestive, and eliminatory).

When we use sound therapy to stimulate the auditory system, we find the results to be more global than the original goals of increasing phonemic awareness, reading, or language skills. Improvements in handwriting, posture, sleep habits, communication, social skills, confidence, calmness and math are a few of the peripheral changes we have seen.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a French ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat specialist), discovered in the early 1950’s that the ay we listen has a profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. He also discovered that many learning problems are the direct result of listening problems.  He distinguished hearing from listening, indicating that they are actually two different functions of the ear.

Hearing is the passive perception of sound.  Listening, on the other hand, involves the desire and ability to focus on selected sounds; to choose what sound information we want to attend to so that we can process it in a clear and organized manner.

Listening is closely related to attention and concentration, and integration, understanding and retention of auditory information, and therefore, critical to learning.

What happens when a person’s hearing is good, but their listening is poor?
Surprisingly, poor listening can affect a wide number of areas. Canadian Listening Therapist and author Paul Madaule has put together a checklist of abilities or qualities that relate to listening skills. There is no score, but this tool may be helpful evaluating an individual’s ability to listen, and therefore to learn. This checklist is reprinted here with the permission of The Listening Center, Toronto (www.listeningcenter.com)

Listening Skills Checklist
Development History: Our early years
This knowledge about our younger years is extremely important in early identification and prevention of listening problems. It also sheds light on possible causes of listening problems.

  • A stressful pregnancy
  • Difficult birth
  • Adoption
  • Early separation from the mother
  • Delay in motor development
  • Delay in language development
  • Recurring ear infections

Receptive Listening: Our external environment
This type of listening is directed outward to the world around us. It keeps us attuned to what’s going on at home, at work, in the classroom or with friends.

  • Short attention span
  • Distractibility
  • Over-sensitivity to sounds
  • Misinterpretation of questions
  • Confusion of similar-sounding words
  • Frequent need for repetition
  • Inability to follow sequential instructions

Express Listening: Our internal atmosphere
This is the kind of listening that is directed within us. We use it to listen to ourselves and to gauge and control our voice when we speak and sing.

  • Flat and monotonous voice
  • Hesitant speech
  • Weak vocabulary
  • Poor sentence structure
  • Overuse of stereotyped expressions
  • Inability to sing in tune
  • Confusion or reversal of letters
  • Poor reading comprehension
  • Poor reading aloud
  • Poor spelling

Motor Skills: Our physical abilities
The ear of the body (the vestibule), which controls balance, muscle and eye coordination and body image needs close scrutiny also.

  • Poor posture
  • Fidgety behavior
  • Clumsy, uncoordinated movements
  • Poor sense of rhythm
  • Messy handwriting
  • Hard time with organization, structure
  • Confusion of lefts and rights
  • Mixed dominance

Level of Energy: Our fuel system
The ear acts like a dynamo (a powerful motor), providing us with the “brain” energy we need to not only survive but also to lead fulfilling lives.

  • Difficulty getting up
  • Tiredness at the end of the day
  • Habit of procrastinating
  • Hyperactivity
  • Tendency toward depression
  • Feeling overburdened with everyday tasks

Behavioral and Social Adjustment: Our relationships skills
A listening difficulty is often related to these qualities of interacting with others.

  • Low tolerance for frustration
  • Poor self-confidence
  • Poor self-image
  • Shyness
  • Difficulty making friends
  • Tendency to withdraw or avoid others
  • Irritability
  • Immaturity
  • Low motivation, no interest in school/work
  • Negative attitude toward school/work

At the Therapeutic Literacy Center in Solana Beach, we use Samonas Sound Therapy, Auditory Stimulation Training system,  metronome and audio-vocal training to stimulate the auditory system and improve listening and listening-related skills. As students become better listeners, they have also become better learners.

Here is one story:
John came to the learning center as a 7 year old. He had been diagnosed with apraxia, which affected his gross motor coordination, graphomotor skills (handwriting), and oral motor skills. When he started, John showed extreme difficulty with any fine or gross motor movements, organization, or coordination. He had difficulty articulating sounds and words and difficulty expressing himself in a way that others could understand. He was obviously very bright, but had difficulty with social and language comprehension. He had huge amounts of uncontrolled energy and serious attention problems. He could attend to a task for only 10-15 minutes with re-direction. He was a non-reader, had trouble making friends, and had poor self-esteem.

After 4 weeks of sound therapy, John had better control in swimming; more eye contact; clearer, more controlled language; and had begun asking questions about conversations and other things in general.

After 6-7 weeks of sound therapy, John was using larger words and more mature sentences and questions. His sentences were no longer fragmented. He showed dramatic Listening and Learning - Not always as straightforward as it seems. Find out about Auditory Processing Disorderimprovement in artwork (from scribbles to drawings), and showed better motor coordination. He started doing front and back somersaults in the pool, with control. He wrote a note on his own for the first time and posted it on his bedroom door. His self-esteem was reported as high!

John’s learning skills improved dramatically as a result of his listening therapy. His increased attention, motor coordination, articulation, communication, and auditory and language processing abilities allowed him to be ready for further processing skills development and academic skills. John is now reading at grade level!

Samonas Sound Therapy is a music and sound stimulation method that focuses on re-educating the ear and auditory pathways for increased attention, communication, listening, and sensory integration. This is accomplished through the use of specially modified classical music and nature sounds that stimulate the hearing mechanism to take in a full spectrum of sound.

Samonas was developed by German sound engineer, Ingo Steinbach. With his background in physics and music, Steinbach combined the principles of Dr. Alfred Tomatis with advances in technology and physics to develop the Samonas recordings.

Find out if your child’s learning struggle may actually be a listening issue.  Call or contact us today to talk about your child’s needs and how we and our tailored programs can help them overcome the challenges they are facing!