Hearing is an essential sense!

Our hearing sense, or auditory sense, is a sense everyone has typically heard of. It responds to noises 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:

  • Alerts us to sounds within the environment

  • Tells us the direction sound is are coming from

  • Lets us know if a sound is safe or dangerous

  • Helps us to communicate with each other

dog with large ears being pulled out to side

Hearing is an essential sense!

Our hearing sense, or auditory sense, is a sense everyone has typically heard of. It responds to noises 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:

  • Alerts us to sounds within the environment

  • Tells us the direction sound is are coming from

  • Lets us know if a sound is safe or dangerous

  • Helps us to communicate with each other

What might it look like if our hearing sense isn’t working well?

Some children and adults will 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 brain itself.  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 our post ‘What is Sensory Processing Disorder.’ Here we 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.

Poor sensory modulation of the auditory sensory

When the hearing sense doesn’t modulate sensory inputs well there are three different responses.

Sensitivity to sounds

Some children or adults can be sensitive to sounds. This means their brains can be quickly overwhelmed by noises. Sound sensitivity is often one of the first sensory issues noticed by parents and teachers. Children and adults with autism also often have sensory processing difficulties including sound sensitivity.  This can be called hypersensitivity to sound too.

Some common signs of auditory hypersensitivity are:

  • Dislikes loud, unexpected sounds (sirens, school bells)

  • Startles easily to unexpected sounds

  • Easily distracted by background noises such as a lawn mower outside, an air conditioner, a refrigerator or buzz from fluorescent lights

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. We discuss this further in our post on auditory sensitivity.

Slower responses to sounds:

Some children and adults are slower to respond to sounds. They may need more time before they respond to the noise or to be closer to the noise before they notice it.  You might observe:

  • Not responding when his or her name is called

  • May not hear sounds in the environment

Seeking out noise:

Finally, some children or adults seek out more noises and sound. They may make more noise themselves or deliberately move closer to sounds.  Children who experience sensitivity will sometimes make their own sounds to drown out other sounds in the environment.  It’s important to observe for this.  If a child is seeking out more sound you may observe:

  • Loves to play music and television at extremely loud volumes

  • Enjoys noisy environments such as sports arena, shopping centres, malls and the cinema

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.

Our hear sense is essential for learning and participation.  It supports language and also helps us to navigate in our environment.

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.

What about sensory discrimination with sound?

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!

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.

Photo Credits

Dog Photo by Kyle Smith on Unsplash

Cat Photo by Matheus Queiroz on Unsplash

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