Auditory Processing Training Increases Confidence and Learning
Jill Stowell
Founder of Stowell Learning Centers / 3-Time #1 Bestselling Author / Mission: Eliminate the Struggle of Learning Differences
“Fake it till you make it!”
Sounds good, right??But what if you had to do that all the time??Children and adults with auditory processing challenges often find that “fake it till you make it” is a way of life.
Auditory processing is one of my favorite topics. In this article, we’re going to take a look at why it has such a profound impact on learning, social skills, and general sense of confidence and well-being.?
We’ll look at:
Auditory processing is not your hearing - it’s how the brain perceives and thinks about or processes information that comes in through your ears.??
Imagine that you are in a conversation on your cell phone and the signal is staticky and cutting in and out. Now imagine that this is what it sounds like to you in a staff meeting at work, when you’re helping customers, and in every conversation with your friends or family, It’s like this all day long. How is that going to affect you?
I can tell you.?You’re going to be exhausted.?It doesn’t matter how old you are or how determined you are, listening intently enough to really know what’s going on when the message is spotty or unclear is extremely taxing.?As a survival mechanism, your brain is just going to quit listening.
What Do Auditory Processing Delays Look Like in Real Life?
Here’s what that looks like in a classroom - the child stops paying attention and starts playing with things on his desk.
The teen starts gazing off into space during lectures and you’re getting reports that she might have ADD.
We had a 12-year old student who really wanted to participate in discussions in class so at the beginning of his 6th grade year, he always raised his hand, but his auditory skills were so delayed that he missed most of what the other students said. When the teacher called on him, he would say something that a classmate had just said and everyone would laugh.?Within 2 weeks, he just quit participating.
We had an adult student - a teacher actually - who was distressed that no one seemed to like her. Because listening was so hard for her, she talked all the time.?She didn’t really realize she was doing this, but talking non-stop so she didn’t have to listen was an unconscious coping mechanism that was exhausting to everyone around her.
People are social creatures.?If you’re feeling lost or confused much of the time in conversation, you’re going to tend to overcompensate as the teacher did by talking all the time, or you’re going to withdraw.?You’re going to feel insecure in communication - afraid that you’ll say the wrong thing.??
As parents, we want so badly for our kids to have friends. I remember a little boy named Jarod who could make friends, but he just couldn’t keep them and it broke his mom’s heart.?Jarod was actually one of my very first students to do auditory training and I was looking for changes with speech articulation and reading, which we got, but his mom was most excited that Jarod had made and kept some really good friends.
Good Auditory Processing Improves Energy
Auditory processing impacts our energy and sense of well-being.?Sound is vibration or frequencies.?The high frequencies in sound provide energy to the cortex of the brain for focus and motivation.
Here’s an experiment for you to try:
Notice how you feel right now. Now, in a low, depressed-sounding, Eeyore voice say, “Today is a great day”.??
Notice how you feel.? Does it feel like a good day???
Now say the same thing in an energized confident voice.?“Today is a great day!”? Now how do you feel??Totally different, right? If you feel more “up,” your voice fed your brain high frequencies, which are energizing and uplifting.
Auditory Training
Dr. Alfred Tomatis - a French physician and one of the very first pioneers in the field of auditory training, discovered what he called the “auditory feedback loop.”?
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In his research, Dr. Tomatis found that the voice cannot reproduce what the brain cannot hear.
People who frequently mispronounce words, have low energy, get confused or misunderstand when listening, have difficulty sounding out words, or speak with poor inflection or a monotone voice typically have poor listening skills.?This is likely related to not processing a full range of sound frequencies, particularly those mid-range language frequencies and the high frequencies that make what we hear sound sharp and clear.
When we do auditory training, our students listen to specially engineered music, or sound therapy, that stimulates the auditory system to take in a full range of frequencies in sound. Once the brain is processing a greater range of frequencies in sound, the listener will have better energy and better input with which to think and learn.
Then we do active auditory training lessons where the student and clinician are using headphones and a microphone to help the student’s voice acquire the wide range of frequencies that his brain is learning to hear or pay attention to.? Ultimately, the person’s voice becomes the ongoing stimulus for their own auditory system.
Because of that auditory feedback loop between the voice and auditory system, our own voice can boost our energy and sense of confidence and well-being.
In our experience, the vast majority of students with dyslexia; autism spectrum disorder; reading, speaking, language, or comprehension challenges; and those with difficulties socially have delayed or inefficient auditory processing.?
Sound therapy and active auditory training stimulates the auditory system to take in a full range of sound frequencies.?With a clearer, more accurate, and complete message to think with, interventions for reading, speech, expressive language, and comprehension make more sense and get far better results.?Memory and response speed improve because the student is getting better input to start with.? They don’t have to expend extra time and mental energy to? try to discriminate between similar words or try to connect the dots with spotty information.
Tools for Stimulating Auditory Processing at Home
Here are two strategies that you could use at home to help stimulate your or your child’s auditory processing, so here we go:
The first is what we call a "hand mic". You are literally going to use your hand as a microphone.?Hold your right hand about one inch from your mouth and tilt it slightly toward your right ear.?Read orally for 10 to 20? minutes a day using the hand mic.?Your hand will absorb some of the low frequencies and direct the higher frequencies towards your right ear.?In most people, the right ear is what you can think of as the language ear because there is a speedier connection between the right ear and the left hemisphere, the language hemisphere of the brain.
The 2nd strategy is called Thinking Caps.?This is a Brain Gym activity. This is a great activity to do before listening to a lecture, going to a meeting, or whenever you need to perk up your ears for listening.
With your thumb and fingers gently uncurl the curved parts of your ears and massage the ridge of your ears.?Work your way down and back up a few times.?This helps you tune out distracting noises and helps you focus on music or spoken language.??
If you or your child are struggling because of weak auditory processing, don’t let anyone tell you that it cannot be improved.
I remember a number of years ago one of our clinicians was doing a school psychology internship.?At her first IEP meeting, the school psychologist explained to the parent that her child had auditory processing delays.?When Mom asked what could be done about it, our clinician was appalled to hear the psychologist say, “There’s nothing you can do to change it.”??
Auditory training is certainly not as prevalent as it should be, but over 70 years of research and decades of clinical evidence show that the auditory system can be stimulated and developed.??
Jill Stowell, M.S.
Author:? Take the Stone Out of the Shoe: A Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning, and Attention Challenges
Founder/Executive Director Stowell Learning Centers where we help children and adults eliminate struggles associated with dyslexia and learning disabilities.??
Watch or listen to this episode on the LD Expert Podcast: https://stowellcenter.com/2023/03/31/episode-57-auditory-processing-key-to-increasing-confidence-and-learning/