Auditory processing is identifying, interpreting, and attaching meaning to sound. Berry and Eisenson state that children with auditory processing deficits can hear sounds but are unable to recognise them for meaning. Auditory processing plays as important a role as visual processing in reading.

Problems in auditory processing generally correspond to those in the visual area and are presented under the following components:

1. This refers to the ability to hear similarities and differences between sounds. The child with a problem in this area cannot identify gross differences, like the difference between a siren and a school bell, or phonemic differences, like the difference between the words /pen/ and /pin/ or /bin/ and /pig/.
   
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2. Auditory foreground-background differentiation. This refers to selecting and attending to relevant auditory stimuli and ignoring the irrelevant. The child who has difficulty in this area is unable to make such differentiation. As a consequence, everything heard is attended to equally. Thus, the teacher’s voice is lost in the background noises of other children’s whispers, the voices in the corridor, or the traffic sounds coming from the street.
   
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3. Auditory blending. Also referred to as auditory analysis and synthesis, this is the ability to synthesise individual sounds that form words. The child who manifests difficulty in this area is unable to blend the individual sounds in a word, such as /c-a-t/. The child may know the individual phonemes but cannot put them together. Similarly, the child may have problems separating an unknown word by syllables, such as /te-le-phone/.
   
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4. Auditory sequencing. This refers to the ability to remember the order of individual sounds in a given stimulus. The child who has problems in this area is unable to recite the alphabet or numbers or recall or carry out orally given directions in the order in which they are presented.
   
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Characteristically, according to Hayes, the child with auditory processing problems (1) may seem to ignore verbal directions; (2) may appear to daydream; (3) ask for repetitions of directions or say “what?” and “huh?” often; (4) watches everyone else to see what they are doing before following directions; (5) may have poor speech patterns; (6) may be monosyllabic or may not volunteer information; (7) may tend to gesticulate a lot; and (8) usually prefers visual tasks.

Edublox clinics specialise in cognitive training that makes learners smarter and helps them learn and read faster, easier, and better. The classes address:

* Concentration: Focused and sustained attention.

* Processing skills: Visual and auditory foreground-background differentiation; visual and auditory discrimination, synthesis and analysis; form discrimination; spatial relations.

* Memory: Visual, auditory, sequential, iconic, short-term, long-term and working memory.

* Logical thinking: Deductive and inductive reasoning.

* Reading, spelling, vocabulary and comprehension.

Classes are offered in English and Afrikaans. Contact us

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