Dyslexia, Auditory Processing Issues, And How To Navigate It All!
You’ve most likely heard of auditory processing skills and how important they are. You’ve probably engaged in a conversation like the one that follows.
“Put the paper on the table.”
It’s a simple command.
But tell it to a child with dyslexia or auditory processing issues, and you’ll most likely be met with nothing more than a blank stare.
Or…maybe a meltdown.
Either way, something gets lost along the way. Lost in translation, so to speak.
Try this one: “What’s six plus two?
Your child might know this answer. You know they know.
But once again…a blank stare is what you’re met with.
By now, you’re gnashing your teeth, pulling your hair out. Ready to run off to an isolated island…forever.
These are all symptoms of auditory processing problems, and kids with dyslexia struggle miserably with them.
Kids with dyslexia usually struggle with auditory processing issues. This, in turn, means that dyslexia and auditory processing disorders can interfere with decoding and reading abilities. Obviously, this combination makes it difficult for kids with dyslexia to overcome reading challenges.
About three to five percent of school-aged children suffer from auditory processing disorders. Additionally, twenty percent of the school population has dyslexia.
These issues have 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.
The Bravo! Reading Dyslexia Assessment can give you tons of information on not only how your child learns but on specific auditory processing skills like auditory discrimination and auditory memory. Auditory processing skills affect not only reading but learning and social skills!
Processing An Auditory Route – Basic Communication At Its Finest
Dyslexia and auditory processing disorders affect basic communication abilities. 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!
Check out the free Bravo! Behavior Booster if your child struggles with behavior issues, whether they are related to auditory processing skills or not.
With a few quick changes, you’ll start seeing both behavioral and academic improvements!
The Great Sizzle: Auditory Processing Skills And Reading
Furthermore, dyslexia and auditory processing skills play a crucial role in your child’s ability to read and decode words. Although it’s generally thought that reading is a visual process, auditory skills play a huge role in decoding, fluency, and comprehension.
And recent research shows that kids with dyslexia also have an auditory component to their disability.
Think about hearing a silent voice in your head while you read. It helps you process auditory information as you quickly sound out words.
Due to their processing issues, kids with dyslexia often fail to hear this silent voice, which hinders their ability to decode words with automaticity.
It Better Be Automatic!
Next, think 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! But kids with dyslexia and auditory processing issues struggle in these areas…and many more! It takes them much longer to process these “easy” skills.
Auditory processing skills must be firmly in place for your child to properly hear letter sounds. If your child struggles to read, especially to decode words, then dyslexia and auditory processing disorders are most likely to be part of the problem.
Inside Out And Upside Down…
If your child has dyslexia or an auditory processing disorder, 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 disorder, 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?
The Big Distraction Of Auditory Processing
Obviously, if you hear background noises in louder tones, it can be distracting, making it difficult to focus on schoolwork. 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 also process 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.
Focusing When It’s Skewed And Distorted
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.
All The Little Things You Need To Know About Auditory Processing
A lot happens when your child “hears” something. Plenty can go wrong, in this process, especially for kids with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders. 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 dyslexia and auditory processing skills are interfering with reading and learning success.
Processing Auditory Information: The Checklist That Counts
Auditory Processing And All The Ways It Can Go Wrong
Children with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders 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.
So How Do You Know If It’s 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.
They’re Really Just “Reception” Problems
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.
The Big Question: Is It An Auditory Processing Disorder?
Children with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders fail to process auditory information 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.
Testing: The Great Budget Breaker
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.
The Symptoms You Need To Know About
The Effects On Reading: The Down Side Of Auditory Processing
The Big Filter Makes A Difference!
Children with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders often lack an auditory “filter”. This means that it’s difficult to tune out inconsequential and irrelevant information. 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 disorder, but there is a crossover of symptoms.
It’s All In How You Hear It!
Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognize, compare, and distinguish subtle differences between different sounds. This skill is usually weak in kids with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders. If your child struggles with auditory discrimination, words and sounds cannot be distinguished between.
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.
Another skill that kids with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders struggle with is auditory memory. This skill 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.
It’s The Big Kahuna Of Sound!
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.
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.
It’s All In The Order, So Let’s Line Them Up!
Auditory sequencing is the ability to understand and recall the order of sounds and words. Order is extremely important for reading. If your child has dyslexia and auditory processing disorders, then most likely, auditory sequencing will be a struggle. Spelling will be difficult as well as decoding words, 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.
The Auditory Blender Makes It Happen!
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. Children with dyslexia and auditory processing problems struggle with auditory blending, although with the right tools, these kids can decode words like a champ!
The Great Affect On Reading…
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 and those with auditory processing disorders especially struggle with auditory blending because they cannot visually see or perceive the letters or hear the differences between the sounds.
Closing Gaps Is Important For Processing Auditory Information!
Auditory closure is an auditory skill that greatly affects reading comprehension and fluency. It’s also another skill that’s difficult for kids with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders to master.
Auditory closure 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.
Pesky Sounds And How To Close Them Up!
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.
There’s A Big Need To Compete!
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 a 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.
Children with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders have a difficult time with auditory figure ground. It’s as if there’s too much auditory stimuli for them to process at one time.
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.
When It Just Can’t Be Tuned Out…
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.
Deeply Embedded Makes It Difficult!
As you can well imagine, auditory analysis is a difficult skill for kids with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders.
This auditory skill 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.
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.
How To Make Sense Of Small Bits Of Sound!
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.
Obviously, children with dyslexia and auditory processing disorders usually have a hard time with this difficult skill.
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 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.
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.
The Auditory Processing List You Need To Check Twice!
