learn to listen

Often children who come to our program with a label of ADD/ADHD are not...rather they have auditory processing issues such as discrimination or blending which interferes with the attentional processes.

Hearing and Listening...What's the difference?

Hearing is the ability of the ears to take in sound. The ear's mechanics or structure is capable of responding to sound.

Listening is the result of our auditory processing or how our brain processes and interprets the sounds received from the ear. In other words....our understanding.

Listening Style is the learned behavior and how we prefer to listen.

Auditory Processing is the ability to make sense of the sound that comes into the ear and to process or interpret what is heard.

Difficulties with auditory processing does not mean the ear is not hearing, but rather difficulty with how this information is interpreted or processed by the brain. Auditory processing affects how we listen and therefore affects how we view the world.

Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognize differences in phonemes (sounds). This includes the ability to identify words and sounds that are similar and those which are different.

Auditory memory is the ability to store and recall information, which was given verbally. An individual with difficulties in this area may not be able to follow instructions given verbally or may have trouble recalling information from a story read aloud.

Auditory sequencing is the ability to remember or reconstruct the order of items in a list or the order of sounds in a word or syllable. For instance, the word “task” may be heard as the word “tacks” because the order of the s and k were processed in reverse order, much like some children will visually see letters in reverse order, some children hear or process them in reverse order.

Auditory blending is the process of putting together phonemes to form words. For example, the individual phonemes "c", "a", and "t" are blended to from the word, "cat". With some children they will process these sounds out of order and repeat the word as “tac”. Or they may omit the first sound or last sound and repeat the word as “at” or “ca”.

An auditory processing deficit can interfere directly with speech and language and can affect all areas of learning, especially reading, comprehension and spelling. When instruction relies primarily on spoken language, the individual with an auditory processing deficit may have serious difficulty understanding the lesson or the directions.

The Program

We combine modern technology to assess and treat attentional issues, or verbal and reading comprehension or articulation and phonological deficits.

We often find children with reading comprehension issues have memory deficits.

And most individuals who have articulation or phonological disorders also have receptive speech problems. This receptive problem often means that the individual cannot distinguish tokens of a target speech sound that are articulated correctly from those that contain errors. In other words, garbled in...garbled out...

Crossroads Institute's Learning to Listen approach allows us to not only identify those with these problem but to treat them efficiently. Treatment with the Learning to Listen Program is commonly followed by rapid and substantial improvements in both receptive and productive speech, improved reading comprehension and improved attention, focus and concentration.

With a thorough listening evaluation specific listening and processing problems can be pinpointed and identified and then specifically treated.

Learning to Listen is one approach Crossroads Institute offers. After a comprehensive listening test that will evaluate air vs. bone conduction an 8 week listening program my be recommended to help re-wire the brain to learn how to process verbal information.

This improved listening ability will improve tonal processing which in turn improves sequential auditory processing and language processing.

In addition to the Learning to Listen Program, visualization programs may be recommended as well as neurotherapy to help balance brain wave activity that may be inhibiting processing.

We also offer a full spectrum of neurodevelopmental home based exercises that can accelerate the progress your child makes.