This document discusses hearing and auditory processing skills that are important for learning support teachers. It covers the anatomy of the ear, causes of hearing problems, behavioral and language signs of hearing issues, what auditory perception is, and how hearing develops in children. Key auditory skills are defined, like listening, localization, segregation, recognition, discrimination, analysis, and memory. Suggested activities to develop these skills are provided, such as listening games, auditory treasure hunts, and sound categorization exercises. The importance of intervention for children with hearing delays is also mentioned.

1. Music of hearing
Roelien Herholdt
roelienherholdt@gmail.com

2. Sound waves
Frequency/pitch Amplitude/loudness

3. What is the
problem with
waves?

4. Why is process hearing important
for learning support teachers?

5. Anatomy of hearing

7. Aetiology of hearing problems
Perinatal & infancy
Pre-term
Low birth weight
Birth trauma
Herpes Simplex
Cytomegalovirus
Severe jaundice
Incubator noise
Childhood
Impacted cerumen
Otitis media
Foreign bodies
Measles & mumps
Cerebral malaria
Meningitis
Ototoxic medicine
Pre-natal
Rubella
Syphillis
Toxoplasmosis
HIV infection
Iodine deficiency
Ototoxic medicine
Family history

8. Signs of hearing problems?

9. Behavioural signs
• Response to sound
• Interest in conversation
• Inattentive
• Struggle with verbal
instructions
• Ask to repeat
• Prefer face-to-face
• Turn volume up
• Struggle to hear if there are
back-ground noise
• Unexplained irritability
• Pulling, scratching or
complaining about ears
• Overly dependent

10. Language signs
• Discriminating between
consonants
• Discriminating between vowels
• Hearing of soft sounds (sh, s,
f, t, k)
• Auditory analysis
• Relating graphemes to
phonemes
• Better at sight word
recognition than at reading
phonemic words
• Struggle with rhyme
• Omission of suffixes
• Low reading comprehension
• Limited vocabulary

11. Speech signs
• Late talkers
• Unusual voice quality
• Unusual volume
• Faulty pronunciation
• Poor articulation
• Inappropriate answers to
questions

12. What is auditory perception?

13. When does hearing become
auditory perception?

14. How much of what we hear
depends on cognitive processing?
Expectation:
What’s that big noise?
What pig outdoors?
Prior learning
Connections
Context

15. Development &
delays
• Optimal period: pre-natal-6
years
• Delays influence:
• Language development
• Social development
• Behaviour and emotional
expression
• Academic skills
• Intervention programme
includes:
• Listening skills
• Auditory perception
• Language skills

16. Listening skills
— Model good listening
— Be clear what is
expected while listening
— Get attention
— Realistic opportunities to
practise
— Listening lotto
For the teacher:
Say what you going to say,
say it, summarise what you
said

17. Auditory
adaptation
Gradual decrease in hearing
sensitivity during sustained, fixed
level auditory stimulation

18. Auditory
localisation
• Determining where a sound is
coming from
• Some ideas:
• Auditory treasure hunt
• Listening outside

19. Auditory
segregation and
integration
• Distinguish sounds coming
from independent sound
events
• Integrate sounds that belong
together
• Some ideas:
• What do you hear?
• https://
www.freesound.org

20. Auditory recognition and
categorisation
— Recognition = detection
— What do you hear?
— Which of these sounds belong together?
— Find the picture for the sound.
— When you hear a “s” jump up…

21. Auditory discrimination
• Detecting differences in
sound
• WEPMAN test
• Easier to detect differences
between sounds from
different phoneme
categories, e.g. b and o
• Do these words start with
the same sound?
• Which word is the odd one
out?

23. Auditory analysis
and synthesis
…and more
• Detection and discrimination
first
• Blending: m-a-t= mat
• Segmentation: mat=m-a-t
• Deletion: “mat”, if I take the
“t” away, what is left?
• Substitution: “mat”, if I
change the “m” to a “b”,
what do you have?

24. Auditory memory
and sequential
memory
• Recall of what was heard
• Echoic memory
• Sensory register for auditory
information
• Stored for 3-4 seconds
• Then replaced
• Working memory
• Phonological loop

26. Other fun activities