Auditory Processing

Auditory Processing Skills and Reading

Have you ever asked your child to do something, only to be met with a blank stare? Or has your child had a melt down when you asked for more than one task to be finished? Is mental math difficult for your child?

These are all symptoms of having an auditory processing problem.

About three to five percent of school-aged children suffer from auditory processing issues. This has a direct affect on not only reading, but on all schoolwork. That’s because most classes (even primary classes) are taught using a lecture format these days.

Auditory Processing is Basic Communication

Even more importantly, the skills needed for auditory processing affect basic communication. Kids who struggle in this area often have social skills issues as well. They hear things in a distorted way or miss parts of words, which changes the meaning of something. As a result, they will often “die on a hill”, arguing over what they think was heard.

If your child struggles with auditory processing issues, then temper tantrums might be a common occurrence. It’s frustrating trying to navigate a busy, loud world when auditory information isn’t processed correctly!

Crucial Skills for Decoding

Auditory processing skills play a crucial role in your child’s ability to read and decode words as well. Although it’s generally thought that reading is a visual process, auditory skills play a huge role. Think about how you can hear a silent voice in your head when you read. Or how about the sound of each letter in the alphabet – you know them so automatically now that you don’t even have to think about them!

Auditory processing skills must be firmly in place for your child to properly hear letter sounds. If your child has dyslexia or is struggling to read, an auditory processing disorder might be part of the problem.

Inside Your Child’s Ears…and Brain

If your child struggles to process auditory information, then there’s a glitch in the path between taking in sounds through the ears and processing these sounds in the brain. Did you know that we take in sounds with our ears but that the actual processing of auditory information is done in the brain?

When there’s an auditory processing issue, your child might hear background noises in a “louder” manner than other children, making it hard to focus. For instance, a pencil moving across paper can sound as loud as a jet engine. Can you imagine how difficult paying attention in class would be if this was how you “heard” simple sounds?

Noises Inside their Heads?

Some kids hear the “chirring” of a computer so loudly that they can’t focus. Any background noise can set them off. Because of this, these kids are often misdiagnosed with ADD/ADHD (attention deficit disorder).

It’s too difficult to focus when these excessively “loud” distractions are competing for attention.

Just as sounds might be processed too loudly, they can also be processed too quietly. If your child has this problem, you might be asked to repeat information a lot. Your child might also lean forward and make strong eye contact with you in an effort to make sense of what you are saying. Hearing syllables in words is almost impossible for kids who struggle with this auditory processing issue, as they can’t hear the subtle differences between tones.

Skewed and Distorted Sounds

Sometimes, individual or distinct sound units are heard incorrectly. The auditory information gets skewed or contorted in the brain. Meaning gets mixed up if this happens, and your child might argue with you about what you said. This is extremely frustrating for both of you!

Reading can be impacted if specific sound tones are heard incorrectly. Vowel sounds can be especially cumbersome for children who struggle to hear tones. Once again, it’s just too difficult to detect similarities and differences between the specific tones. As a consequence, words are decoded incorrectly, and this directly affects reading comprehension in a negative way.

The Nuts and Bolts of Hearing

A lot happens when your child “hears” something. A lot can go wrong, too. As previously mentioned, hearing involves a lot more than simply letting sounds drift into the ears.

It’s hard to notice what’s happening when your child processes auditory information, because we can’t crawl inside someone’s brain and see what’s going on. However, there are tests available that can let you know how your child processes auditory information. With the results from these evaluations, you can tell if auditory processing skills are interfering with reading and learning success.

(If you’d like specific information on how your child processes auditory information, check out the Bravo! Learning Evaluation).

The Primary Components of Hearing

Following is a list that will help you get a general idea of the main components of hearing.

Hearing involves the ability to:

  • attend to various sounds and remember them
  • be aware of the direction from which the sound originates
  • repeat sounds in order to recall these sounds
  • be aware of rhythmic patterns
  • isolate a sound
  • form a variety of different sounds
  • distinguish a sound from background noises
  • draw meaning from verbal stimuli
  • fuse the sounds coming into two ears into one unified
  • identify a sound in the beginning, middle, and ending position of a word

 

When Something Goes Wrong…

Children with auditory processing problems are bright, normal children who suffer from the inability to process auditory information correctly. There are two main routes of processing auditory information.

First, your child must be able to take in sounds correctly through the ears. If your child has trouble in this area, then most likely, a school hearing test would have been failed. Or, your pediatrician would have tested for this. Either way, you would have been notified. From there, you’d take your child to an audiologist for further evaluation to see if hearing aids are a good fit.

Is it an Auditory Processing Disorder?

If your child still struggles with reading and learning, it’s best to check for the second route – an auditory processing disorder which is called a Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD). This is a deficit in your child’s ability to internally process and comprehend sounds.  

If your child has a CAPD, sounds can be jumbled or distorted, partially gone, delayed, choppy, distorted, or warbled. Background noises can be heard too loudly. Or, loud noises might be heard too quietly. If you’ve ever been talking on a cell phone and the reception is bad, you might have an idea of what a child with CAPD endures. You most likely got frustrated or hung up to avoid the discomfort of filling in so many auditory gaps.

For a child with CAPD, the “reception” doesn’t suddenly turn back on. This constant confusion and interference becomes a way of life. Because it’s so difficult to process auditory information with CAPD, these kids will often retreat and withdraw, not only from school but from life.

Because communication skills are directly affected, kids with CAPD will often have social problems and are bullied. They miss the little nuances of sound that are crucial to communication and are often viewed by their peers as “different” because of these behaviors.

Evaluating an Auditory Processing Disorder

If your child has dyslexia, then most likely auditory information is not being processed correctly. It was once thought that dyslexia was primarily a a visual processing problem, but new research indicates there’s an auditory component to dyslexia as well. For kids with dyslexia, there is a double dose of incorrect processing of information – both visual and auditory. This puts them at an extreme disadvantage academically, especially in subjects that involve reading where both visual and auditory skills are crucially important.

It Can be Expensive…

Testing for CAPD can be expensive, often costing thousands of dollars. Even after a diagnosis, help is difficult to find. Schools will offer an IEP (Individual Education Plan) if your child qualifies. However, keep in mind that an IEP is a form of Special Education, and all too often instead of directly treating the auditory issues, schools will simply water down curriculum to keep your child “comfortable”.

Your child can be taught to process auditory information correctly, but there is no pill for this. It takes time and effort.

Symptoms of an Auditory Processing Disorder

If you’ve ever wondered if your child has an auditory processing disorder, following is a list of symptoms:

  • not following verbal directions well
  • a tendency to rush through assignments
  • daydreaming or not paying attention in class
  • distracted
  • temper tantrums
  • easily confused
  • difficulty with interpreting and understanding verbal information and cues
  • must look at your face to understand verbal directions or instruction
  • incessant talking or bothering other students in class
  • doesn’t do well in large groups
  • has melt downs in stores or other areas where there is a lot of background noise
  • has an existing diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, or the teacher or another professional has suggested that the child may suffer from this disorder
  • behavior issues that seem un-explainable

Types of Auditory Processing Skills that Affect Reading

Filtering Out Distractions:

Your child might lack an auditory “filter” so that inconsequential and irrelevant information can be tuned out. Because of this, your child might hear the air conditioner whirring in the background as if it’s an engine roaring. The buzzing of fluorescent lights can send your child into a tailspin, making it difficult to focus or concentrate. Sometimes, even gentle noises like rainfall or a ceiling fan spinning can sound like the scraping of fingernails down a chalkboard.

Obviously, when background noises are so distracting, it’s hard to pass tests, focus, or even read out loud. Even playing with other children or communicating can be hard when background noises can’t be filtered properly. Sometimes, these kids are misdiagnosed with ADD/ADHD because of their inability to focus. The problem is truly an auditory processing issue, but there is a crossover of symptoms.

Auditory Discrimination:

Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognize, compare, and distinguish subtle differences between different sounds. For example, the words fifty and fifteen sound a lot alike. This can really confuse a child who struggles with auditory discrimination. It also directly affects how that child reads and decodes words!

Kids with auditory discrimination issues don’t just struggle to hear differences in words. Even letter sounds, especially vowels, can give them problems. For instance, “i” and “e” sound very similar, and kids who struggle with this skill will often switch these vowels around when reading. Of course, this means the word is usually decoded incorrectly!

In addition, children with auditory discrimination issues might hear phonemic units incorrectly, unable to tell the differences between these small units of sound. They might hear the phoneme “ad” as “at”. Once again, this means words are read incorrectly, meaning is changed, and fluency is adversely affected.

Auditory Memory:

Auditory memory involves the ability to take in oral information (spoken), process it, store it in the mind, then recall it when needed. It is one of the most important auditory skills needed for successful reading fluency and comprehension.

As a child reads, sounds must be recalled. If your child struggles to remember or recall auditory sound units, then fluency slows down. There is just too much thought being put into the process, too much time spent trying to recall these important sounds. When fluency is weak, reading scores are usually lower than expected.

Struggling with Auditory Memory

If your child struggles with auditory memory, then it’s difficult to understand oral directions. It’s like there’s no “glue” to hold the information in place. Classroom lectures and reading instruction get tangled in your child’s mind, and meaning is skewed. Multi-step instructions are even worse. It’s as if the words fly right through your child’s ears without sticking.

Poor auditory memory skills directly affect reading comprehension, since it’s too difficult to recall large chunks of auditory information. Even if a child is reading silently, auditory processing skills must be in place. Readers need to automatically know sounds, recall them when needed, and apply them properly.

 Kids with auditory memory issues will often fall apart when given multi-step instructions. For instance, you might tell your child walk the dog, clear the kitchen table, and then feed the cat. If your child melts down, forgets to do the chores you assigned, or wanders away without doing any of the assigned tasks, then auditory memory might be weak.

Auditory Sequencing:

Auditory sequencing is the ability to understand and recall the order of sounds and words. Order is extremely important for reading. If your child struggles with auditory sequencing, then spelling will be difficult as well as decoding, because it’s too difficult to place letters in the correct order.

In addition, saying words can be difficult. Kids who struggle with auditory sequencing might say “ephelant” for “elephant”. This, of course, changes meaning or frustrates listeners, once again affecting communication skills.

Kids who struggle with auditory sequencing struggle with math as well, since they can also place numbers in the correct order. For instance, they might say the number “678” as “768”. This would result in an incorrect answer as well as confusion.

Auditory Blending:

Auditory blending is crucially important to reading. It’s the process of putting together phonemes to form words. For example, the individual phonemes “c”, “a”, and “t” are blended to form the word “cat”.  Phonemic awareness and blending letters together to form words with meaning fall both use auditory blending as a basis for word delivery.  

Reading is heavily reliant upon blending sounds together, so if your child struggles with auditory blending, then sounding out words and decoding will be quite difficult. Your child will stammer and stutter while reading out loud because it’s too difficult to blend sounds together. The individual sounds override the ability to combine them together.

Reading Fluency Scores are Affected

Your child’s reading fluency scores will most likely be low if your child struggles with auditory blending because the process of blending letters together is simply too laborious. Answering comprehension questions is equally difficult, as it’s too difficult to focus on meaning when sounding out words is so difficult.

Dyslexic students especially struggle with auditory blending because they cannot visually see or perceive the letters or hear the differences between the sounds.

Auditory Closure:

Auditory closure an auditory skill that greatly affects reading comprehension and fluency. This is the ability to fill in gaps of speech. For instance, if someone talks quickly, you might have to fill in pieces of information to gain meaning.

If you’ve ever talked on a cell phone that was cutting out, and you had to strain to understand what was being said. When this happened, you were using auditory closure skills to fill in missing auditory gaps. You might have also noticed how frustrated you were.

Reading Words as “Wholes”

When your child reads, auditory closure skills kick in to make sure words are read as “wholes” and not “bits and pieces”. If your child struggles with auditory closure, filling in those gaps is hard. Fluency is poor, so your child will read more slowly than expected. Comprehension takes a hit as well because meaning can get skewed or changed when words are read incorrectly.

Reading will be a slow, laborious process if your child struggles with auditory closure. Letters are read wrong, bunched together, or transposed. Text is hard to understand because a lot of what your child reads seems like nonsense instead of real words with actual meaning.

If your child misreads a lot of words, then auditory closure skills might be weak.

Auditory Figure Ground:  

Auditory figure ground is the ability to identify a main auditory signal and differentiate it from background or competing noise. This is very similar to tuning out background noise. The difference is that in auditory figure ground, there will be a sharper, more distinct sound to compete with the background noise, not just an endless noise that distracts.  

This auditory skill is important for children who are in a lecture format during school. They must be able to pick out bits of important information, whether it’s from the teacher, the other students, or technology.

Tuning Out Distracting Noises

For instance, your child’s teacher’s voice needs to take precedence over the airplane flying overhead, leaving a wake of dull noise behind it. When your teacher asks your child to read out loud, then your child needs to know what your teacher is asking and also be able to decode words even if an ambulance is screaming down the street.

It’s hard to stay focused and on task if background noises are distracting you from your main objective. If reading is your objective, you have to be able to focus on that skill instead of the bubbling of the water cooler, the hiss of hot water hitting the kitchen sink, or kids talking out loud in class.

Auditory Analysis

Auditory analysis is the ability to recognize phonemes that are embedded in words. Phonemic units of sound are small bits of sound. They are the building blocks of our language. Examples of phonemic units are “in”, “am”, “up”, “ob”, and “ed”. Kids with dyslexia do best when using a reading and decoding program that’s strong in phonemic awareness.

Important for Phonemic Awareness

Auditory analysis is necessary to find and recognize these phonemic units when they are embedded within words. For instance, the word “chat” has the phonemic unit “at” embedded within it. If your child is struggling with auditory analysis, then finding and using that phonemic unit of sound (“at”) will be difficult.

It’s important that good readers have a firm grasp of the forty-four phonemic units that make up our language. Bigger and longer words (multi-syllable) are built on these smaller units of sound, so if your child struggles to locate and use phonemes, reading and decoding will be difficult.

Sequential Auditory Memory:

Sequential auditory memory is the ability to recall bits of auditory stimuli in a specific order or sequence. This type of auditory memory allows your child to recall pieces of information in the form of auditory stimuli with a specific sequence or order.

If your child struggles with sequential auditory memory, then it’s difficult placing bits of sound in correct order to make a logical, meaningful word. This, obviously, affects the ability to decode words, as in order to decode, letters must be sounded out in a specific order.

When Meaning is Changed

When sounds are transposed, the meaning of the word changes!

Comprehension suffers, as meaning is changed when letter order isn’t correct. Fluency is affected due to the lag in time the child takes to think of the correct sound order in the word. Letters in words are decoded incorrectly, which results in slow, labored oral reading.

Since kids with dyslexia commonly mix up letter order, they also mix up sound order. If your child has dyslexia, then sequential auditory memory skill most likely will be weak, and your child will be frustrated while reading.

Important Skills for Reading and Communication

Your child must be able to remember and use the sounds of words, words in sentences, and the meaning of sentences in paragraphs. These are all sequential auditory memory skills, and are important for not only reading but communication.

This auditory skill also comes into play when your child spells and writes, as to spell a word, correct sound order is important. To write, your child must be able to spell words correctly.

Tips for Helping Your Child if There’s an Auditory Processing Problem

  • Get down to your child’s level when speaking.
  • Give your child your full attention.
  • Maintain eye contact with your child when your child is speaking.
  • Speak slowly and clearly when speaking to your child.
  • Listen patiently without correcting when your child talks.
  • Give plenty of time for your child too finish thoughts.
  • Don’t give the words you think your child is going to say because you are in a hurry or because of impatience.
  • Model good listening skills for your child.
  • Break down oral directions into little chunks or pieces for your child.
  • Try several different ways of giving directions; if one manner doesn’t work, then rephrase it.
  • Provide a quiet homework spot for your child where academics can be done without distractions from siblings, television, video games, etc.
  • Keep loud and obnoxious noises to a minimum while reading or doing school work.
  • Allow your child to look at your lips while you speak; many kids with auditory issues teach themselves to lip read without even knowing it.
  • Make sure your child is in a classroom with a small number of students or consider home schooling.
  • Set up a routine so your child knows what to expect; be sure to go over any schedule changes ahead of time.
  • Don’t tolerate rude or disrespectful behavior from your child even though you know that it is due to an auditory processing problem. 
  • Set up a positive behavior system for your child if necessary. (Check out our FREE Bravo! Behavior Booster!)
  • Give praise to your child when it’s earned, and be sure to tell why you’re giving it.
  • Provide as many visuals as possible.
  • If your child has social problems, find a social skills group or practice social skills training at home.  There are many resources available for social skills.

To find out if your child or student is weak in auditory processing skills, or other learning skills that affect reading, check out the Bravo! Learning Evaluation.