by Veronica van Nierop. B.Sc; D.C; N.E.T; NLP; Berard AIT.
Up until my late 30s I experienced severe symptoms of APD and it made my life Hell!
Partners and parents of people with APD often ask me what it is like for their loved one with APD. In this article I hope to highlight some of the symptoms and complications that people who experience auditory processing difficulties may have and why Berard AIT program may impact them by reducing or resolving difficulties with their auditory processing skills, abilities, and functions.
People do have unique neural systems. The anatomy of a persons' system is fundamentally the same across the species, but people vary in how their particular system responds to the outside world. Some people with APD may have only one symptom and others may have many with varying severity.
Many people are shocked when they gain an understanding the challenges that occur when auditory processing is not efficient, and fascinated when they realise there is an effective training method, Berard A.I.T, that affects how a person processes auditory signals.
We hear sounds and words through our ears, but we need to make sense of this information, and so we sort it, categorize it, and interpret it so that we can understand the meaning of these sounds we process it with our brains.
If the auditory information, the sounds and the words that enters our ears is distorted we have difficulty processing the information, this in turn means we difficulty in making sense of the information and its' meaning.
Distortions can take many forms, such as hypersensitivity, delays, and imbalances in the auditory signal, and any of these can interfere with an individual's ability to process auditory information.
These inconsistencies and distortions in perception often affect the signal-to-noise ratio. An easy way to understand the signal-to-noise ratio is to think of the signal as the important information you want to focus on as you try not to listen to the noise. The signal-to-noise ratio is a measure of how strong that signal is compared to the background noise around it. With APD this can be like trying to hear and understand a whisper in a loud thunderstorm, with wind, rain and thunder taking precedence over the whisper! This in practical terms is the inability to filter out background sounds.
Hypersensitivities, delays and imbalances are the most commonly presenting symptoms with APD. Imagine what it would be like from the moment you wake, to hear some sounds that most people never notice, as super loud and very irritating. E.g. the dripping of a tap, or the sound of someone chewing normally at breakfast. This is the distortion of Hypersensitivity. Or, what if you could never tell where a sound was coming from, or that all sounds whether it be the sound of music in the background at a party or normal traffic noise, were the same volume and crowding out the sound of a friends voice or a teachers' voice when they are standing right in front of you. These are Distortions.
E.g. delays, distortions and imbalances can weaken the auditory signal making it more difficult to distinguish from background noise, this makes it harder to understand speech in noisy environments like classrooms, meetings, restaurants, or any situation where there are many people speaking at once or where there is any type of competing environmental noise.
A.I.T works directly to strengthen and reinforce our natural ability to filter out background noise, making the speech signal or other target signals easier to distinguish from other noise.
Hypersensitivity (sounds heard at a low volume compare to other frequencies, usually less than 5 dB), distortions, delays (lack of auditory dominance of the right brain hemisphere) and imbalances (discrepancies between the way the left and right auditory pathways hear and process input) These features of APD listening can be demonstrated and recorded on an audiogram of the persons hearing range. Peaks and troughs in the listening profile can confirm and give measure to the APD symptoms a person is experiencing.
A peak on the audiogram is a certain frequency that is heard more easily than other frequencies, by self-identification or by simple observation. Very high peaks can create hypersensitivity meaning that someone can be oversensitive to certain sounds and can hear them even at very low decibels (volume) everyday sounds including voices which contain these frequencies can then become uncomfortable and, in some cases, can cause real pain.
So what is this like?
Hypersensitivity - Think of normal speech, it has a rhythm and a variation in tone and pitch. This means to the non APD ear it has a flow, a pattern and range of sound that can be easily given meaning and can be as pleasant as a clear melody. Now, imagine that all day, every day when you listen to someone, every couple of seconds, when a persons' voice is at a particular frequency (note), you hear that sound as hideously loud and aggravating, like finger nails being drawn down a blackboard! or a normal volume punctuated by a piercing volume, then back to normal for a second or two. Every day, all day. Another example could be the soothing sound of soft rain can sound loud and aggressive overwhelming, multiple, machine gun shots engulfing you. Or sounds of being at a noisy restaurant and peoples voices not being a gentle background hum, having the effect of being constantly poked form all sides! The two peak frequencies can cause a mask effect because the frequency of the trough is masked or drowned out by the peaks when this occurs it becomes difficult to distinguish one speech sound from another and we often misunderstand the message.
Delays This is quite common with people who experience dyslexia, ASD, with APD, and this is how it presents. Imagine you are listening to someone talking to you and many times during the conversation they replace a common English word with either a bizarre or foreign language word. Keen to keep up with the conversation you are constantly trying to work out and make meaning of the conversation. OR, that most words sound like a hum of meaningless sounds as if the person is talking to you under water.
Imbalances If both of your ears are not working together and the way each ears' neural pathway perceives sound is different form the other, now that can be like listening to different things in each ear. Imagine what it would be like trying to listen to two different people talking about the same thing but each talking into one ear at the same time. Wow, talk about disorientating and discombobulating!
Another cause for auditory interference is poor auditory dominance; just like we are right-handed or left-handed we can be right-eared or left-eared meaning we process auditory signals with a dominant ear, either the right or the left. Processing auditory information that comes through the right ear is faster and more effective because the auditory signals are sent directly to the left brain which is where the primary language centre is located. When auditory signals are received through the left ear, they go to the right brain and then have to be sent over to the language centre in the left brain which causes a delay in processing.
Sometimes the auditory signals are mixed meaning we can be right ear to dominant for some frequencies and left ear to dominant for other frequencies as a result some sounds enter the right ear and are processed immediately in the language centre in the left brain, while other sounds enter the left ear travel first to the right brain and then must travel over to the left brain to be processed.
The delay can cause words to sound backwards or depending on which sounds are processed first the word can sound mixed up in either case the message is unclear. E.g. Imagine what would it be like for you were never sure of what someone was E.g. If you hear your friend said "I love my tac, her name is Fluffy", you would be confused or bewildered under you realise that she said that she loves her cat! Imagine this happening not once a day but many dozens of times. According to Dr Berard for optimal auditory processing the ears must work together in a coordinated manner; this means we need to hear in the same way with both ears because when the auditory intake is imbalanced it affects our ability to both localize sounds and process auditory signals, it may be difficult to know exactly where a sound is coming from and certain sounds may be distorted.
Of course the brain adapts and has to work harder to get consistency and meaning by trying to even out the distortions, until most people as adults are not aware any more that they have APD. The process has become unconscious and all they feel is easily overwhelmed and disorientated, irritated, and have a very low threshold to external stress and poor mood regulation. In hindsight they realise that they have limited their choices and lives and forgone their potential in order to survive the symptoms of APD. It is not necessary to do this anymore.
The goal of Berard is to eliminate or greatly reduce the Distortions experienced APD sufferers. We have seen how distortions such as hypersensitivity, delays and imbalances can adversely affect our ability to process auditory information.
Berard AIT addresses each of these factors improving the way we process auditory information which helps us think, speak and understand in real time. This shows clinically, as a reduction in the peaks and troughs of the audiogram and a greater right brain dominance with hearing.
The resulting reduction in the peaks and troughs reduces or resolves both hypersensitivity and the masking effect, making listening more comfortable and auditory signals whether it is speech or other sounds easier to understand.
People find that their 'bandwidth' for external engagement increases greatly, their comprehension and ability to digest knowledge increases, and their level of ease and relaxation as well as ability to regulate their moods also greatly normalises.
So, in short, Berard is a re-educational programme for the Brain and processing system. If we experience APD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or other sensory processing issues, it does not 'cure' the condition, because the condition is not a disease, it is a processing difficulty. What Berard A.I.T does is make what you have work more effectively and efficiently as that your ease and pleasurable engagement with the world becomes an expression of who you really are.
If you feel exhausted just reading this and imagining the scenarios above, you can only begin to imagine how exhausting it is to experience this every day, all day for as long as you can remember!.
In the resource section I have short videos explaining the effects of Berard A.I.T. on APD. from behavioural, reading , math, and coordination perspectives. It is a must watch clip. Also there are clips on the research results Berard provides. Enjoy.
Comentários