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Studying how infants process differences in rapidly occurring sounds can predict if a child will have future language problems, according to research being done by Rutgers University (Newark) neuroscience professor April Benasich, who directs the Infancy Studies Laboratory. Researchers are able to determine the full range of brain activity in infants aged 3-6 months by using a number of new methods, including dense array EEG/ERP recordings.Today’s Science Daily reports:
“We are finding that children who have difficulty processing rapid auditory input are not just showing a simple maturational lag, but are actually processing incoming acoustic information differently,” says Benasich.
Specifically, the research shows that babies who struggle with rapid auditory processing appear to be using different brain areas (as shown by neural patterns) and perhaps different analysis strategies to accomplish that task than children who do not have such difficulties. Included among their initial findings, the researchers have found less left hemisphere activity in the brains of children who struggle with rapid auditory processing as compared with matched control children. By pinpointing the exact differences in how the brain handles incoming acoustic information, it may become possible to guide the brains of babies at risk of developing language problems to work more efficiently before the children even begin to speak.
“We can predict with about 90 percent accuracy what a baby’s language capabilities will be just by their response to tones,” says Benasich. “Our hope now is that we will be able to gently guide the brains of infants who are at the highest risk for language learning impairments to be more efficient processors so they can avoid the difficulties that result from struggling with language.”
Science Daily also notes that being able to distinguish between sounds such as ba and da is “critically important because decoding language requires us to process tiny auditory differences occurring as quickly as 40 milliseconds.”
My son Charlie has long had difficulties hearing the differences between sounds, though we did not really know this until he was into he had started doing ABA and other therapies when he was two years and some months old. It was quickly evident that Charlie had some kind of auditory processing difficulties with speech and with language; with differentiating between bubble and muhmuh. (His first audiology test was inconclusive as he screamed and cried through most of it and was not able to follow any of the directions.) He had to be taught to recognize each vowel and consonant sound one by one, and also to say them and he can say anything now.
(And yes there was a time when I thought he never would.)
868 days ago
My daughter could very well have been one identified early on. She was babbling at 4 months, almost nonstop (to where I am sure it was more of a stim now looking back), but went silent at about 5 1/2 months. She has always had feeding difficulties (from birth), oral motor dysfunction and incoordination, speech delay, and so on. People sometimes gasp that she was in ST starting at 10 months of age (to help with pre-communication, but mostly for all those oral motor & feeding issues).
As far as auditory processing, that too has always been an issue. As a baby, she startled at everything (until she was over 2 yrs), however, she didn’t even notice the alarm clock, car alarm, or even the house alarm. She didn’t pass her first 3 hearing tests (in the booth), for the same reasons as Charlie. She either couldn’t hear or process, was afraid, or preoccupied. She finally had an ABR test (normal results). She still has some auditory issues, and I’m curious to gain better understanding of them as she gets older.
For some of us, the signs are there VERY early.
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869 days ago
M does not have CAPD but I do think she has problems in this area. Especially if there is a lot of background noise.
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869 days ago
The study and everyone’s comments remind me that it’s speech that Charlie struggles to process, but not sound, though certain sounds do seem less pleasant to him (loud voices, of late—lots of hands over the ears).
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869 days ago
I also wonder. I started speaking at the typical times (hence the Asperger diagnosis), but I’ve always (to this day) had a lot of auditory processing difficulties, including distinguishing between “b” and “d”, saying “th”, and things like that, and in school I never understood phonics or syllables or anything, even though I could read better than most people my age. I very frequently misunderstand what other people say (even more so than my middly-aged aspie dad), and have times when I can’t talk at all because it is so difficult. Language, particularly speech, is very counter-intutive to me. I really wonder what this test would’ve said about my left-hemisphere activity.
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869 days ago
Now I’m sort of curious where I’d have fallen in this experiment, both as a kid and at my current age. I’m an Aspie and had ‘typical’ language development, but I’ve always had problems processing certain categories of speech that gives NTs very little difficulty. It’s particularly troublesome with really fast-paced speech or when the audio is distorted.
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869 days ago
Interesting that they are considering what sounds like a more formal approach to AIT, but with a bit of real research behind it.
As long as they don’t end up wanting to sell their therapy for lots of money it might be worth it, i.e. it should be freely available to any who need it. Though I hesitate to fully endorse any form of brain altering therapy without research that would likely span longer than the lifetime the researcher will have to spend looking at the problem.
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869 days ago
Did the pertussis vaccine do this to them?
Sorry…I can’t help it. I’m having an overall frustrating day when it comes to science and the layperson.
It’s an interesting study. I know without doubt that our youngest would come up “out of the norm” on these tests and would have from very early in his life. Our oldest, who has Aspergers, didn’t have language delays, and looking at this study and some things I’ve been reading recently about right hemisphere, I’m thinking his left hemisphere would have fallen in the typical range.
Studies have, in fact, already demonstrated that Aspergers kids generally do have left hemisphere processing similar to that of “typical” kids but that children with autism involving speech communication problems also exhibit left hemisphere issues compared to “typical” controls. So, I’d expect the baby, with his significant speech delays, to be more along the lines of having left hemisphere processing differences.
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