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Integrated Learning Therapy includes careful attention to aspects of a child’s auditory processing. We understand that children who have a left dominant ear, for example, may process spoken language more slowly. This means that a teacher’s instructions may not all be clearly heard and understood if delivered too quickly – especially in a classroom environment which is seldom absolutely quiet. Lesson content may be a bit scrambled because of slower transmission of sounds.

It is always good to have confirmation that our knowledge is accurate and supported by empirical evidence. This came in the form of an interesting article recently. Here is the source: The Acoustical Society of America “Want to Listen Better? Lend a Right Ear.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 6 December 2017.

The gist of the article is summarised below.

Basically, the research found that in noisy environments, the right ear leads the way for optimal auditory information processing.

Listening is a complicated task. It requires sensitive hearing and the ability to process information into cohesive meaning. Add everyday background noise and constant interruptions by other people, and the ability to comprehend what is heard becomes that much more difficult.

Audiology researchers at Auburn University in Alabama have found that in such demanding environments, both children and adults depend more on their right ear for processing and retaining what they hear.

The research team’s work is based on dichotic listening tests (testing the ability of each ear), used to diagnose, among other conditions, auditory processing disorders in which the brain has difficulty processing what is heard.

In a standard dichotic test, listeners receive different auditory inputs delivered to each ear simultaneously. The items are usually sentences (e.g., “She wore the red dress”), words or digits. Listeners either pay attention to the items delivered in one ear while dismissing the words in the other (i.e., separation), or are required to repeat all words heard (i.e., integration).

According to the researchers, children understand and remember what is being said much better when they listen with their right ear.

Sounds entering the right ear are processed by the left side of the brain, which controls speech, language development, and portions of memory. Each ear hears separate pieces of information, which is then combined during processing throughout the auditory system.

However, young children’s auditory systems cannot sort and separate the simultaneous information from both ears. As a result, they rely heavily on their right ear to capture sounds and language because the pathway is more efficient.

What is less understood is whether this right-ear dominance is maintained through adulthood. To find out, the research team asked 41 participants ages 19-28 to complete both dichotic separation and integration listening tasks.

With each subsequent test, the researchers increased the number of items by one. They found no significant differences between left and right ear performance at or below an individual’s simple memory capacity. However, when the item lists went above an individual’s memory span, participants’ performance improved an average of 8 percent (some individuals’ up to 40 percent) when they focused on their right ear.

“Conventional research shows that right-ear advantage diminishes around age 13, but our results indicate this is related to the demand of the task. Traditional tests include four-to-six pieces of information,” said Aurora Weaver, assistant professor at Auburn University and member of the research team. “As we age, we have better control of our attention for processing information as a result of maturation and our experience.”

In essence, ear differences in processing abilities are lost on tests using four items because our auditory system can handle more information.

“Cognitive skills, of course, are subject to decline with advance aging, disease, or trauma,” Weaver said. “Therefore, we need to better understand the impact of cognitive demands on listening.”

In the case of younger children who have not decided which ear is dominant, it can help to encourage the right ear to be the leading ear. If a child is strongly left-eared dominant, it can help know this so that necessary classroom adjustments can be made. Either way, Integrated Learning Therapy practitioners are there to help.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.