Auditory Processing

Auditory processing, as separate from auditory memory, is complex, since it takes in all that we experience and process through our ears. At the most fundamental it is processing sound versus no sound, followed by loud versus soft sound (and all the subtleties in between), near versus far sounds, high versus low sounds, etc. Acquiring the ability to distinguish these differences are assumed to be in place by the time a child reaches Kindergarten, and are manifested in the language we use, such as, “George, use your inside voice please.” We assume that George knows to “lower” his voice, but not every student has actually mastered these auditory processing skills by school age.

In 1st Grade, we make a huge jump to the skills needed for phonological processing, such as the ability to hear subtle differences between similar sounding words—“bite” and “bike,” the ability to hear rhyme, the ability to parse the sounds in a word, and the ability to hear the nuanced differences between the sounds of the letters, such as /b/ and/p/ or /ch/ and /j/. The differences between the short sounds of the vowels are even less defined. If a student has not yet distinguished these subtleties, or has difficulty distinguishing them, one large component of teaching reading will be negatively impacted.

Asking a student who cannot make a rhyme to recognize the difference in sound between the short sound of /e/ and the short sound of /i/ is the formula for failure and sadness. That student may be as far back in their auditory processing as distinguishing near and far and high and low sounds. Asking that student to identify vowel sounds is like asking a native speaker of English to process the speech of the humpback whale.

A non-scientific way, but easy observational way, to check the phonological development of

a second semester 3rd Grader is whether they can easily learn “pig latin.” The phenomena of this kind of language play indicates fluidity within language in the auditory domain. Most 3rd graders by the end of the school year can manage this kind of sound manipulation and will continue to grow in their reading skills with any kind for thoughtful reading plan. Those 2 or 3 students who struggle to play with language in this way, will likely have difficulty reading and spelling and may rely heavily on memorization to learn. Heavy reliance on memorization can point to the possibility of an auditory processing weakness.

Auditory Memory

Auditory memory is different than auditory processing. A teacher may say that a student is having difficulty with auditory processing, when that student is actually struggling with an auditory memory problem. Looked at more closely, that student may actually process the sounds of words and language without a problem, but have difficulty remembering. That student may easily be able to hear subtle differences in sounds, parse words and sounds, make rhymes, etc., but struggles with remembering sequences of numbers, letters or words. 

In the days of telephone booths, in any booth you would see telephone numbers written in lipstick on the glass, etched into the paint, scratched into the plastic of the phone – they were everywhere. Those numbers represented the many folks whose auditory memory was so short that they could not remember the phone number long enough to dial it.

Some folks have auditory memories that are okay, if they don’t have to manipulate the information in any manner. They can easily remember a sequence of numbers or letters,

or sounds, but struggle if they have to repeat the numbers in the reverse order from which they were given, or have to hold sounds in mind while manipulating them. Young students with auditory working memory weaknesses have a good deal of trouble, if they are asked to change a sound in a given word—change the /sh/ in fish to /st/ to make the word??? (fist). They will also struggle with explanations or directions that are syntactically complex, like “Put you backpack under your desks, then take out your math books, but first put your homework on my desk.”

When a teacher tells you that your child seems to have auditory processing problems, you need to ask more questions to determine what is being referenced. Questions like:

• Is my child following spoken directions?
• Is there a difference in my child’s following directions that are written versus spoken?
• Can my child retell a story they listened to?
• Can my child make rhymes?
• Can my child breakup words into compound words, syllables individual sounds?

Ask yourself, where do I see my child having difficulties within the auditory domain? Is it hearing it or is it remembering it?

And remember—it is possible to have difficulty in both areas.