Diminishing Dyslexia with Auditory Training

Intervention, like auditory integration training and vision therapy, improve a person’s ability to work at their level of intelligence. The higher the intelligence, the better an individual figures out how to compensate. However, each person copes in different ways.

For example, distorted sounds make it difficult to understand and join group conversations. Therefore, individuals with dyslexia are at an increased risk of misunderstanding what is heard. This can cause embarrassment. Depending on personality, the person may cope by avoiding group conversations. In contrast, a person may take over the conversation doing most of the talking. For individuals with auditory processing difficulties, speaking is typically easier than listening.

Additional difficulties are:

• Short-term memory difficulties
• Thinks out loud, sometimes misinterpreted as bossy
• Says words incorrectly
• Spelling reversals and writing letters backward
• Misunderstands

Diminishing Dyslexia with Auditory Integration Training

After Auditory Integration Training, clients gradually experience improved sound tolerance. As the auditory system strengthens, clients of all ages benefit from auditory neurocognitive training.

About a year after auditory integration training with vision therapy, clients experienced improved academic performance. Also, additional improvements are seen in expressive speech, self-esteem, and socialization in school and out of school.

Even when there is a genetic or a neurodevelopmental diagnosis, there is hope. Direct intervention like auditory integration training and vision therapy decreases learning difficulties and improves emotional health.

Visual Processing Difficulties Found in  Students with Dyslexia

Thus far, all clients also have visual processing difficulties with or without sound intolerance. Overall, numerous studies found a higher rate of visual processing difficulties in students with a diagnosis of dyslexia when compared to typically developing students.

Over a third of 121 students, 41 students with 20/20 vision and receiving special education services for reading difficulties, were found to have reduced ability to use both eyes together to keep print single and clear (Christain, L., Hrynchak, P., Irving, E., Nandakumar, K., Feb. 2018). 

In a study completed by Grisham (1986), fifty percent of children with reading disabilities experienced difficulties with Visual Processing Dysfunctions (VPD). When compared to students without reading difficulties, the visual processing difficulty most often found were difficulties using both eyes together to look at a target. Technically, convergence insufficiency is reduced ability to keep vision clear and single while looking at a target. Thus, objects and letters blurred and doubled while trying to focus on the target. Consequently, visual processing difficulties interfere with reading comprehension. Because the brain is too busy keeping vision clear.

The infant’s eyes are turned towards a sound, an auditory-visual skill. From birth through childhood, auditory and visual skills develop sequentially resulting in instinctive movements.

When there are food allergies, food sensitivities, or chronic congestion, decreased sound stimulation to the hearing system increases the risk for developmental delays. Each milestone of development occurs within certain timeframes. When something interrupts development, direct intervention and purposeful play teach those skills. There is hope.

MRI Study Found Auditory and Visual Underactivity

Using magnetoencephalographic imaging (MRI Scans), researchers assessed auditory processing and visual processing skills in participants with Dyslexia and a control norm group.

MRI Studies

1. Using MRI scans from participants diagnosed with dyslexia, scans are compared to the norm group. Suprisingly, researchers found deficits in both the auditory processing system and visual processing system. (Blau V., Atteveldt, N., Ekkebus, M., Goebel, R., Blomert, L., 2009)

2. In 2009,researchers found decreased neural activity in the brain’s hetermodal superior temporal sulcus and gyrus when presented with “congruent sounds” (recognized sound-letter combinations) and “incongruent sounds” (non-recognized sound-letter combinations). Findings provided an explanation of 2004 research findings. Blau, et. al. (2009)

3. In 2004, researchers found through MRI scans that reading and spelling activate parts of the brain associated with integrating auditory and visual processing skills. (Van Atteveldt, N., Formisano, E., Goebel, R., Blomert, L., 2004)

4. In 1999, MRI scans of the auditory cortex provide evidence that struggling readers suffer from auditory processing deficits during “brief and rapidly successive inputs” of speech. Consequently, listening to self and others causes unclear phonetic pronunciation (Nagarajan, Mahncke, Salz, Tallal, Roberts & Merzenich, 1999).

Resources

Christain, L., Hrynchak, P., Irving, E., Nandakumar, K. (Feb. 2018). Kids with reading problems may have abnormal binocular vision. Journal of Optometry.

Blau V., Atteveldt, N., Ekkebus, M., Goebel, R., Blomert, L. (2009). magnetoencephalographic imaging.

Raghuram, A., Gowrisankaran, S., Swanson, E., Zurakowski, D., Hunter, D., Waber, D., July 19, 2018. Frequency of visual deficits in children with developmental dyslexia. JAMA Ophthalmol.