Learning doesn't have to be hard... More on Tomatis

The key is to address the basic problem, not just the symptoms, of learning difficulties. The Tomatis Method offers a solution for many of our students at risk. The Tomatis Method affects a learner's ability and motivation to communicate and process information more effectively. This allows a problem learner to be transformed into a receptive and motivated learner. The teacher now has someone who can and wants to learn.

The Tomatis Method of sound stimulation, used worldwide for nearly half a century, has proven successful in helping children, adolescents, and adults improve their learning skills. It also helps bring out the gifts and talents we all have, allowing us to access our abilities and skills, even those that are not overtly evident. In other words, it helps us expand our potential. It is as appropriate for those with learning disabilities, or challenges, as one of our clients describes them, to those who are gifted in all walks of life.

We believe people learn best if (1) they have the functional ability to perceive and process information effectively and (2) they are motivated to do so. The Tomatis Method addresses both these needs. When we develop listening as the foundation for learning through language and communication, we get to the basic skill we've been seeking for decades.

The Listening Program helps people:

Learning and Listening

To become a good learner, we have to become a good listener. That is easier said than done, but fortunately Tomatis has developed a highly effective method to make you a good listener, and thereby a better learner.  

Hearing and listening are not one and the same. As you will see, there is a huge difference between the two. It is good "listening" we are after. However, good hearing is the foundation of good listening! Therefore, we will then look at those aspects of hearing that impact our listening ability.  We will also look at what else our ears do for us. You are in for an interesting ride into a land of science, unknown to many people. Ready?
Excellent Hearers and Poor Listeners

Listening is a specialized form of hearing.  Listening, not hearing, is the primary function of the ear. Tomatis makes a clear distinction between hearing and listening:

We can have excellent hearing but be poor listeners. Many children with learning difficulties or attention deficit have excellent hearing, according to the school audiologist, but still cannot read well or concentrate. Their problem is a listening problem, not a hearing problem. 

Good hearing is the foundation of good listening, making sense of what we hear. So, what type of hearing problems could lead to listening, and thus learning problems? That is the topic of the next chapters.

Managing the Body

The function of the ear is much too complex to describe it fully here. For our purposes, we will focus on a few functions only. When sounds enter the ear, they first come to the eardrum. Like a musical drum, it needs to be stretched. That is done by two tiny muscles that control the hammer and the stirrup. If they are too weak (because of recurring ear infections, for example), sounds do not enter the inner ear well, but are distorted. One of the breakthroughs of Tomatis is that he has been able to come up with a Listening Program to tune up these muscles. We will talk about the benefits of this program later on.

Once the sounds enter the inner ear, they stimulate the vestibule, and are analyzed by the cochlea. The vestibule is the most ancient part of the ear. It controls balance, coordination, muscle tone, and every single muscle in our body, including the muscles of our eyes. It helps us to fight the pull of gravity and is actively involved in each step that leads the brain to process sensory information. Eye-hand coordination, strangely enough, also depends on the good functioning of the ear! Walking, dancing, running, riding a bike, climbing stairs or a cliff, writing a letter are all activities requiring the vestibular system to work optimally. It also constantly informs us about our body moving through space. The vestibule is really the manager of our body.

What are the signs of vestibular dysfunction? Poor posture, clumsiness, jerky or fidgety movements, messy handwriting, poor sensory integration, avoidance of physical activities or sports are often signs of a sign of vestibular dysfunction. Because the vestibule affects so many of our basic functions, children or adults with vestibular difficulties often have learning disabilities.

Jean Ayres, a pioneer in the study of sensory integration, pointed out that when the vestibule is under-stimulated, kids can become hyperactive. To compensate for the lack of auditory stimulation, the kid will move around continuously. Unfortunately, the kid does not get a lot of benefit from it, as the vestibule is not able to translate it into a genuine stimulation of the brain.

Hearing too Much

Can hearing too much harm us? Yes, it can. To become a good listener, we need not only to be able to "zoom in" on information as but also to "zoom out" (or filter out) irrelevant background information. Good listeners have a zoom lens in their ears!

So, why do some people lack this defensive? Jean Ayres relates this problem to a vestibular problem. In this case, the vestibule does not act as a gatekeeper. It lets everything through. There is an additional reason, but to understand this one, we have to introduce a new concept. 

The "Other Ear"

We don’t hear with our ears only. We also hear through the bones of our body. Bone, indeed, conducts sound very well. When we talk, we hear ourselves through our ears (air conduction) and through the vibrations of our bones (bone conduction). That is why we do not recognize our own voice when it is recorded. When our voice is on tape, we no longer have the benefit of the bone conduction sound. It cannot be reproduced on tape. The voice we hear inside will never be the voice others hear on the. That’s why people often swear the voice on the tape is not theirs. Still, we each know it’s ours because the words and inflections are ours. 

In order to learn, we need to be able to hear the internal bone vibrations. If, for whatever reason, we’ve tuned these vibrations out, learning becomes very difficult. They are the vibrations that make the internal sound when we read silently. They are the thoughts that we hear just milliseconds before we speak. 

When a door is slammed without warning, or the tires of a car suddenly screech in the street, our body shudders instinctively. That's because we felt the sound before we heard it. Our body reacted faster than our ears. Bone conduction momentarily took over air conduction. Interestingly enough, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) children and adults experience this all the time. People with ADHD and ADD  listen too much with their bodies, they hear too much through bone conduction. The problem is that they do not have a mechanism to selectively screen out sensory information that enters through the body. Therefore, people with ADD and ADHD have to either

The Listening Program trains your ears to become the main entrance to sounds, and make your bone conduction the secondary entrance. That way, the sounds can be processed in the correct way.  We'll do it by having you listen to gated music through a special headphone that is equipped with a vibrator. Through the vibrator you'll listen with your body, at the same time as you listen with your ears. Over time, you will adjust to listening primarily with your ears. Desensitizing the bone conduction reduces the stress and gives them the ability to pay attention and learn more effectively.

We will also train you to correctly use the bone conduction. One of its functions is to forewarn the ear that sound is coming. This can be best illustrated with an example. When you want someone to really pay attention, you tap them on their shoulder and say: hey listen! The function of the bone is exactly the same: it says to the ear: hey listen! Ideally, the ear should obey to this command almost instantaneously. In people with ADD and ADHD, however, it can take a relatively long time. So, their ears are not ready to process the incoming sounds in time. Fortunately, we can remedy this.  When we start the training, will send the sounds to the bone a long time before it is sent to the ear (up to 250 milliseconds in case of severe Attention Deficit). Over time we will gradually reduce the interval to a few milliseconds only, getting your brain adjusted to the proper use of your bone conduction.

Children with autism often suffer unbearable pain because of auditory hypersensitivity. When you "feel too much", you cannot pay attention. Unconsciously, you will cut off the source of your suffering and become aloof and detached. 

When we work with autistic children and adults, our first goal is to desensitize them (paradoxically through the use of sounds).

The Discriminating Ear

Sound is a very complex mixture of hundreds of frequencies, of varying intensities. Even the most sophisticated computers have trouble analyzing it. That is why "voice recognition systems" are still so imperfect. The part of our ear that is responsible for analyzing sounds is called the cochlea. It must analyze the sounds quickly and accurately. People with dyslexia often have problems in this respect.

The cochlea's first task is to analyze which frequencies the sound contains. That is easier said than done. Each sound has a base frequency and so called "higher harmonics." Some sounds have nearly the same base frequency, and differ only in the higher harmonics. For example, a "B" and "P" have similar base frequencies; likewise, a "T" and a "D." Computers have difficulties telling them apart, and so have learning disabled people. When someone says to them "Bob," they are not sure what was said: it could be "Bob" or "Pop." By the time they have figured out what was said, the speaker is already in his next sentence. Consequently, they process language at a slower rate than those whose ear works well. They have an auditory processing delay problem! Still those children or adults swear that they do hear well; furthermore, a hearing test does not show any hearing loss. 

What would you do if you had such a problem? At first, you would do your utmost to catch up, costing you a lot of energy. You may get exhausted, be constantly tired. You would now and then answer the wrong question, making you feel dumb. At one point in time, after having tried too many times in vain, you may decide to bail out. You do not really pay attention to what people say any more. Lacking the stimulating discussions, you stop growing. Behind your back, people are saying that you are not very smart, and somewhat immature. To make things worse, auditory processing problems make reading a struggle as well.

Reading is a complex act that requires the ears and eyes to work together synchronously. As your eyes see a letter of the alphabet, your ears identify the corresponding sound. Then, the vestibule leads your eyes from letter to letter and the cochlea translates each letter into a sound. Ideally, both operations should happen almost simultaneously. The trouble starts when the delay is too long and prevents the synchronization of the eyes and ears.

To make things more complicated, each sound lasts a specific time. The ear constantly has to adjust to these rapid changes. When it does not, the eyes and ears are no longer in synch. The right sound is not put together with the right letter. Without the sound, the letter remains dead. The meaning cannot emerge. The dyslexic is left second-guessing, hoping for a miracle, taking the chance to utter finally a sound that might fit the letter of the alphabet dancing on the page.

Most auditory processing problems can be addressed by reprogramming the way we listen. It makes a huge difference: not only will we learn more easily, but our thinking will become clearer and our organizational skills make a quantum leap." 

The Learning Ear

Did you know that your right ear has a different job to do than your left ear?  Did you know that we all have a dominant ear? Did you know that it makes a hell of a difference whether your right or left ear is your dominant ear? Tomatis discovered that people who are right ear dominant learn much easily than those who are left ear dominant. In hindsight, that is quite logical. The right ear is directly connected to the left brain, the brain that processes language. That is a direct, fast connection. If you listen with your left ear, the sounds first go to the right brain.  That part of the brain has no language center and, therefore, the information has to be rerouted to the left brain via the Corpus Callosum.  Because that’s a longer pathway, the information is delayed. Left-ear-dominant people thus have to play catch-up all the time. Not only is the information late, it is also incomplete. In the transfer from the right brain to the left brain, some of the higher frequencies are lost. As we have seen before, these are the frequencies that are key to distinguish similar sounds (like a B and a P). Left-ear-dominant people thus not only have to play catch-up, they also have to play with an incomplete deck.

Tomatis also discovered that our speech is controlled by our ears. People who are right-ear dominant are better able to control the parameters of voice and speech … its intensity, frequency, timber, rhythm, flow of sentences. It is one of the reasons why many great actors and singers trained with Tomatis!

Ear dominance also impacts our emotional well-being. In 1975, Badenhorst, a researcher, wrote:

“Right-ear dominant subjects displayed a superior capacity to relate spontaneously  and appropriately to emotional stimuli.  They also displayed a more extroverted   orientation, were more responsive and in control of their emotional responses and  were less prone to anxiety, frustration and aggression.”

The Tomatis Listening Program will help you use your right ear more effectively. Towards the end of the program, we'll gradually shift the sounds from the left ear to the right ear. You'll also do some reading exercises through a microphone coupled with our electronic equipment. We'll filter your voice and return it exclusively to your right ear. Over time, you'll become right ear dominant, and read, learn and speak better.

More Than Hearing

When we think about our ears, we usually focus on hearing. That is certainly the most obvious function, but there is more to the ear than hearing. Tomatis point out that several functions of the ear are as important. All of these functions are taken into account in the Tomatis Listening Program .

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Still skeptical? READ ON!!!

From Skeptic to Convert, The Objective Way By Dilys Treharne

Editor's Note: The following article appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of the British magazine, Speech & Language Therapy in Practice. Dilys Treharne is a speech and language therapist teaching developmental disorders at the Department of Human Communication, University of Sheffield in Sheffield , United Kingdom . In addition Dilys does research on central auditory processing disorders. Speech & Language Therapy In Practice Results from her research were so encouraging that Dilys Treharne now uses The Listening Program as the first step for young people with auditory processing difficulties, 'priming the system' for more specific therapy programmes. I work with children and young people with auditory processing difficulties. Usually between 6 and 17 years of age when referred, they are underachieving or complain of not being able to hear properly in school but on pure tone testing have no significant hearing loss. Some have had a dyslexia assessment but only show a borderline pattern. Others have had a significant amount of speech and language therapy focusing primarily on phonology and comprehension with some expressive work, and have made limited progress. Many have a history of poor attention and in some cases have had a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder or mild autism. Referrals come from audiology departments, speech and language therapists, teachers and parents. After an in-depth assessment a pattern of difficulty emerges with selective attention or auditory figure-ground tasks (hearing speech in background noise which most people are not aware of, such as the hiss of a gas fire or a clock ticking), maintaining attention, auditory sequential memory, sequencing, dichotic listening tasks, temporal pattern processing, pitch perception, processing language at normal speed, motor coordination, and motor coordination with speaking. Not all the children have all the problems. Some have a clear auditory processing disorder and some will be borderline or at the lower end of the normal range. However, if they are having problems functioning in the classroom they are offered a programme of therapy. Initially I used Earobics to improve listening skills, together with tasks tailored to the individual to teach tolerance of background noise, auditory memory, and phonological awareness. I used the relative visual strength to support comprehension of read and spoken sequences through visualizing and verbalizing. 'Brain Gym' style activities (see Dennison & Dennison, 1989) were used to improve coordination and concentration. Progress was slow and used a great deal of clinical time. Worth A Try I was then introduced to The Listening Program (Advanced Brain, 1999), a type of sound therapy programme built upon the work of Tomatis. It was different in that it was home-based and required the relatively short two fifteen-minute periods each day for five days a week over eight weeks. I was objectively skeptical, but anything was worth a try, and it came with good reports. I evaluated it with a limited number of children, selecting the prime problem areas for assessment (Treharne, 2001). In this first cohort were 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 years with non-verbal intelligence scores ranging from the 3rd to the 95th percentile. They all had problems with auditory figure-ground and most with auditory sequential memory and attention. Temporal pattern perception, phonological awareness, reading and spelling were also common problems but at a higher stage of processing. Baseline assessments were repeated on the prime areas of auditory figure-ground using the Goldman Fristoe Woodcock (1976) Auditory Skills Selective Attention test, and auditory sequential memory using Gardner 's (1996) Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills (TAPS-R). Temporal pattern perception was tested using my own TraCol (in preparation). Children who had made no progress over the previous eight weeks were selected. The Listening Program (classic) is contained on eight CDs, one for each week. (There are ten CD's in the Level One TLP kit.) Each contains 12 tracks, three to be used at a 15 minute listening period of which there are two each day. The music is classical, specially recorded and then acoustically treated by filtering out certain frequencies (this varies from track to track and increases as you move through the programme.) Nature sounds are added and the whole is presented dichotically. This has the effect of the sound appearing to move around the room and to be near or distant. I purchased the CDs but ask parents to provide the CD player and high quality headphones if possible. The children's pleased expressions at being expected to sit down and listen to CDs twice a day fade a little when told it is based on classical music. Some have grown to like it while others still only like the "duck bits." I discuss the listening diary by telephone and the parents collect and return CDs to the clinic each week, so several children can work with a single set. I am also able to lend a full or half set for eight or four weeks to children who live further away. Beyond Expectations In the evaluation study the children were reassessed at the end of the programme and then left for eight weeks before being reassessed once more. The results were beyond my expectations: all showed an improvement greater than one would expect from maturation. The pattern of change was interesting. Parents noticed an improvement in general attention and attention to sounds within three weeks. All reported a greater responsiveness to conversation. One child who did not initiate conversation even at home began offering opinions and became quite a chatterbox; another noticed the church bells for the first time in his eight years. Awareness of sound and attention span had not been assessed in the pre-trial period so I was unable to objectively measure the amount of improvement in these areas. In the sixth or seventh week of the programme many children exhibited a deterioration in behaviour, becoming disagreeable or aggressive. Fortunately this lasted only a few days to a week, and settled as they moved on to the next CD. This occurred at a point where the gating (acoustic modification) is markedly increased and I believe this, together with the child's increased sensitivity to sounds in the environment, was the cause and a sign that the programme was being effective. The greatest change was in selective attention (auditory figure-ground). All made an appreciable improvement and the overall change for the group was significant. Those with the severest difficulties made the greatest improvement. In some this change was dramatic moving from below the first centile to the 7th, 9th and one case 16th centile in just eight weeks. Remember, these children's scores had remained static for the previous eight weeks. Many also showed change in auditory memory but perhaps this was due to their improved attention levels. The measured changes were small immediately after the programme and in many cases the greatest change occurred within two months after completion. These improvements were good in themselves but more importantly they were maintained and opened the door for other activities such as SoundsSmart or Earobics to become effective. Progress did not stop after two months, and even those without direct intervention continued to make gains. The length of this extended progress period varied. When progress stopped or a slight regression was noticed the child took another course of The Listening Program. Progress was also evident in fields not directly targeted. Joe, who had been very slow to make any progress in speech and language and at eight years was still almost unintelligible with really low self-esteem, became much more relaxed and confident and, two thirds of the way through the second course, his phonological system had improved dramatically without further intervention. We have also tried The Listening Program with students who were finding lectures difficult to follow and some have noticed a change. The results are being analyzed. Originally designed as a home programme, it can also be used in school. Four children have completed it at two schools with a special needs classroom assistant. The children listen in a group while the assistant does paperwork. They discuss what they have heard and the listening record is written up. The schools are amazed at the results and consider it time well spent. The effect of The Listening Program has prompted me to explore other sound therapy techniques - such as the Sound Health CDs, also from Advanced Brain - to support and maintain attention and concentration levels after the programme at home and in schools. The Listening Program is now my first step in auditory training as it seems to activate listening skills that have been repressed or never developed, thus priming the system for more specifically targeted therapy programmes. References Dennison, P.E. & Dennison, G.E. (1989) Brain Gym. Edu-Kinesthetics Inc. Leeds , J. (2001) The Power of Sound. Healing Arts Press. Treharne, D. (2001) Efficacy of TLP with Children with Auditory Processing Problems. Paper presented at TLP conference November 2001. (Full version on www.advancedbrain.com.) Resources Earobics: Cognitive Concepts, www.cogcon.com Gardner , M.F. (1996) Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills - Revised. Ann Arbour Publishers Ltd. Goldman, R., Fristoe, M. & Woodcock, R.W. (1976) Auditory Skills Battery Selective Attention Test. American Guidance Service. Treharne, D. (in preparation) Test of Rhythm and Comprehension of Language.     Results>     Return to Purchase page