Sensory Processing Part 3 – Visual Integration
Welcome back, campers! Glad you came back for Part 3 – Auditory Processing. Sensory processing can be pretty difficult to understand, so we continue to break it down. It is important for us to understand sensory processing – how it works and how it can affect the people we care about – so we can be better, more empathetic parents, friends, family members, and therapists.
Let’s review – sensory processing is a simple (not so simple) machine. Remember there is input, processing, and output. Input is taking in the sensory stimuli. Our eyes take in light (input) our brain decides what the lights mean, are they important and/or dangerous, and what should we do with this input (processing)? Depending on the answers our brains come up with regarding the stimuli – we put out an appropriate response: run, blink, look away, comprehend what we’re seeing, etc.
When it comes to auditory processing, the input is sound waves that we detect with our ears and our bones (believe it or not). When people identify as “deaf” or “hard of hearing” or “hearing impaired”, there is frequently a problem with the input. For example, many people wear hearing aids to boost the sound so they can detect and better process the sound waves. The ears, and the other biological apparatuses that we use to hear, are extremely complex, and something we can talk about later. Today, let’s talk about what it means to understand sound (to process and make decisions based on what we hear).
Have you ever noticed that infants respond to sound, but they don’t talk? It is perfectly typical for a child to make noises, but we don’t really expect them to “talk” to us until they are approximately two years old. We listen for two years before we speak. Think about that for a moment – two years of listening. That’s a long time. Also interesting to consider: infants all across the world take two years to listen, before they begin to really speak in their native languages. That means that no matter what language you hear, as an infant with a developing brain, it takes approximately about the same time to learn how to process English, French, Swahili, or Walpiri.
As we learn to listen, we also learn about the importance and the meaning of the sounds we hear. To English speakers, “Apple” means a certain thing, namely a fruit. If an English speaker hears, “Pomme”. We may have no earthly idea what that means. Is it a command? An object? A warning? French speakers know that “pomme” means “apple”. Labelling things is really important to understand the world around us, but what about words like, “LOOK OUT!” or “FIRE!”. We have learned when we hear those words, we should do something with our bodies in order to stay safe. The output (our behaviors) depends on how we process the auditory information that comes in.
Consider how difficult it is to create appropriate outputs when we can’t properly process verbal information. Academics, social/emotional learning, relationships, so many aspects of our lives can be affected by difficulties with auditory processing.
Children often use games to challenge their own auditory processing skills. Have you ever played the game, “telephone”? One person whispers a word or phrase into the ear of the person next to them, who then whispers it to the next and the next, and the next, until the final person repeats the phrase back. Have you ever tried to detect a sound, or talk, underwater? Have you ever been sitting in a crowded restaurant and rather than listening to the person across from you, listen to the couple arguing behind you? Is it easier to learn new or complex information if you read it or hear it? These are examples of how we use, play with, and understand our own auditory processing skills.
Although we each have our own neurological strengths and challenges, by understanding others with empathy, we can continue to understand sensory processing and become more compassionate people.