Hearing is an essential sense!
Our hearing sense, or auditory sense, is a sense everyone has typically heard of, pun intended! The sense of hearing responds to noises or sounds in the environment. These noises, or sound waves, travel through our ear to the brain. The brain then processes this sensory information. Our hearing sense:
Key takeaways: Our hearing sense
1. The hearing (auditory) sense helps us detect, locate, and interpret sounds, this is essential for communication, learning, and safety. Some children may process sounds differently even if their hearing is medically normal.
2. Auditory processing challenges can show up as either sensitivity to sound (e.g., distress from loud noises) or slower responses (e.g., not noticing when their name is called). These differences can affect focus, participation, and comfort in everyday environments like classrooms.
3. Sound sensitivity can be particularly challenging, as it can lead to overload, it can be common in autism. Kim explores sound sensitivity further in GriffinOT’s sensory aware training.
Hearing is an essential sense!
Our hearing sense, or auditory sense, is a sense everyone has typically heard of, pun intended! The sense of hearing responds to noises or sounds in the environment. These noises, or sound waves, travel through our ear to the brain. The brain then processes this sensory information. Our hearing sense:
What might it look like if our hearing sense isn’t working well?
Some children and adults have hearing loss. This can occur for a number of different reasons. Sometimes it might be damage to the ear drum itself. It could also be damage to the nerve that connects the ear to the brain, or damage in the the part of the brain that receives the noises. When hearing loss occurs, children may need hearing aids or a cochlear implant. They may also communicate through sign language, or lip reading.
The information on this page focusses on hearing and sensory integration or sensory processing. This is different to having hearing loss. These children will pass a hearing test without any issues. However, their brains process sounds differently.
The hearing sense and sensory processing
When the hearing sense isn’t processing the sensory inputs it receives very well there are two typical sensory issues: difficulties with sensory modulation and poor sensory discrimination. You can learn more about sensory modulation and discrimination in this article: ‘What is Sensory Processing Disorder.’ Here I will discuss how these sensory issues affect the hearing sense.
As already mentioned, the information below relates to difficulty processing sounds in the brain once they have been heard. This is different to being able to hear sounds in the first place such as if a child is deaf or has hearing loss. When the hearing sense doesn’t modulate sensory inputs well there are two different responses.
Sensitivity to sounds
Some children or adults experience sensitivity to sounds. This means their brains my quickly overwhelmed by noises. Or, that they might find it difficult to ignore background sounds. Often these children become distressed when they hear sounds that are more difficult to processes, for example a vacuum cleaner or hand dryer. This means sound sensitivity is often one of the first sensory issues noticed by parents and teachers. Autistic children and adults also often have sensory processing difficulties including sound sensitivity. This can be called hypersensitivity to sound too.
What are common signs of auditory hypersensitivity?
What might sound sensitivity look like?
When there is sensitivity to sounds the child or adult may have constant overreactions, or bigger reactions, to everyday sounds in the environment. This distracts the child or adult from what they need to be listening to. It may mean they avoid certain places, for example, children avoiding the toilets because they don’t like the sound of the hand dryer. Sensitivity to noise can also often result in a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response in the brain. I discuss this further in my post on auditory sensitivity.
In addition, these children (and adults) may also sometimes make their own sounds or cause loud noises to drown out other sounds. Or, they might seek out other sensations, such as proprioception, to try to regulate. They might chew, or move about or fidget to help their brains ‘drown out’ the sounds that are uncomfortable to them.
Slower responses to sounds:
Some children and adults are slower to respond to sounds. When there is a slowness to respond to sounds, children and adults may respond in two ways. They might seek out higher intensity sounds to help them to process and understand. Or, they may need more time before they respond to the noise or to be closer to the noise before they notice it.
What are common signs of auditory hyposensitivity?
Our hear sense is essential for learning and participation. It supports language and also helps us to navigate in our environment.
Poor auditory discrimination
Sensory discrimination refers to the ‘what’ and ‘where.’ For the hearing sense, this relates to the qualities of the sounds. For example, how loud was the sound? What pitch was the sound? Which direction did the sound come from? Was it a familiar noise or new? Was it your mother’s voice or your father’s? Is it a sound you like? Was there any rhythm to it? Children and adults with poor auditory discrimination skills can find processing all of these sounds more challenging.
What is auditory discrimination?
Sensory discrimination refers to the ‘what’ and ‘where.’ For the hearing sense, this relates to the qualities of the sounds. For example, how loud was the sound? What pitch was the sound? Which direction did the sound come from? Was it a familiar noise or new? Was it your mother’s voice or your father’s? Is it a sound you like? Was there any rhythm to it? Children and adults with poor auditory discrimination skills can find processing all of these sounds more challenging.
Why is sound discrimination important?
Sound discrimination is very important day to day, especially in the classroom. A child must be able to discriminate between sounds to be successful in a phonics lesson. They must be able to know which sound is the lunch bell and which bell is a warning alarm. They need to be able to discriminate between their teacher’s voice and general chatter. It’s also important to know which direction the voice is coming from so you can look the right way. The same is true at work or at home, understanding the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of sounds is really important!
Why is our hearing sense important for learning and participation?
The ability to focus and attend to the correct sounds is essential for learning and participation. If you’re at a party and a friend is telling a story you need to be able to ignore the other sounds in the background and focus on their voice. For children and adults with sensory processing disorder sometimes this can be impossible. The background music may be all that their brain tunes into rather than that of the speaker making it really hard to listen and join in.
At school and work, you must be able to pay attention to lessons or meetings. The hearing sense is super important to help with your learning and participation. If you’re not listening, you will likely miss important information. Sometimes children and adults with sensory processing disorders are trying to listen but their sensory issues make it more difficult to process the sounds they are hearing.
Finally, our hearing sense is very important to help to support out communication. Whilst there are options to communicate if you have hearing loss, speaking is the typical way that humans communicate their ideas and needs. We need to be able to discriminate the differences between sounds and combinations of sounds. We can also figure out emotions or extra meaning from by the pitch, pace or volume the speaker uses.
If you want to learn more about the auditory sense and hearing sensitivity, you can join GriffinOT’s Success with Sensory online training. In the training Kim gives an overview of the hearing sense and explores how you can support children with sensory needs, like sound sensitivity.
Photo Credits
Dog Photo by Kyle Smith on Unsplash
Cat Photo by Matheus Queiroz on Unsplash
About the author
All articles on the GriffinOT website are written by children’s occupational therapist Kim Griffin. Kim has over 25 years’ experience supporting children with sensory and skill needs, their teachers and families. She is the author of multiple books, presents all training at GriffinOT and hosts the EBPOT podcast. Kim is currently completing her PhD, focussing on supporting children’s self-regulation in schools, at Oxford Brookes University.
Date last updated by Kim: 5th May 2026
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