LEARNING EARS

An important premise behind listening therapy is that it stimulates the brain to pay attention to a fuller spectrum of sound, allowing the auditory system to work more efficiently and providing the listener with alertness and better auditory input. Our goal is to strengthen the auditory system for more efficient learning and communication so that whatever challenges the individual is dealing with can be overcome, allowing the individual to operate with a new set of skills. One of the steps in this process is the overlapping of advanced auditory stimulation with Samonas Sound Therapy. This is accomplished through ear-voice training, using a step-by-step program called Learning Ears™. The Learning Ears™ program, researched and developed by Gayle Moyers of Moyers Learning Systems, trains the voice to incorporate the full spectrum of sound frequencies that the ear can now hear. In this way, the voice becomes the on-going stimulus for the auditory system. Sound therapy trains the ear to listen for the entire harmonic range of sound. In sound there is a basic, or fundamental tone, and overtones, which are the higher harmonics that carry important information about that sound. It is the overtones, or harmonics that are alerting and energizing to the brain, and create the differences between speech sounds, people’s voices, and tone of voice. Dr. Alfred Tomatis, the French ENT who laid the groundbreaking research in the field of auditory stimulation and listening therapy, showed in 1957 that the voice can only produce those harmonics that the ear can hear. This is known as the Tomatis Effect. The voice cannot reproduce what the ear cannot “hear.” Once the individual is able to process, or “hear” a fuller spectrum of sound, ear-voice training will stimulate the voice to reproduce a fuller spectrum of sound frequencies as well. As a result, the person’s voice quality, intonation, expression, and pronunciation can improve, all of which have far-reaching effects on communication, comprehension, and social skills. Through ear-voice training, the individual is able to listen better to what he is saying, allowing him to self-check and correct his pronunciation, articulation, tone of voice, and verbal content. This phase of auditory stimulation and training is a crucial second step. It allows the individual to maintain the corrections and changes that occurred in the first phase of training, the Activating the Ear phase. Through the combination of sound therapy and ear-voice training, listening and reading comprehension can be expected to improve. Sight vocabulary increases even with those students who aren’t yet readers. People who “just don’t comprehend,” will make changes because their auditory processing is more efficient and available and because they are getting a tremendous volume of language in a format they can handle. In order to be a functional learner, an individual must be able to listen and think, read and think, and say what he wants to say in a few words. The ability to decode (for reading) and accurately take-in oral language is critical. In our experience, the majority of comprehension problems are related to poor decoding of written material and weak receptive language for oral material. When words are not read or heard accurately, comprehension will be lost. Sound therapy and advanced auditory stimulation (the ear-voice training) connect spoken, heard, and written language. Because the auditory system develops an ability it didn’t have before, the brain begins to figure out the language on its own. When the auditory system is stimulated so it can receive sound and interpret it, the result is understanding. Auditory stimulation takes a malnourished brain system and feeds or nourishes it. The healthier system can more accurately hear the sounds in words, which leads to better comprehension of what is heard, and increased understanding of the phonetic code of the language for reading and spelling.