A student's ability to listen is necessary for learning and refining language and academic skills. Children with poor listening skills may hear what is being said but not completely understand it. The child may receive only part of the message. They may remember just the first part of what is being said, or just the last part. A child may remember what was heard but not completely understand the message. Children with listening problems may recall details from a story but not be able to state the main idea. The speech signal that a child hears may not be heard clearly. They may have trouble focusing on the message when there is background noise. A student may start to "tune out" to auditory information. A student with these characteristics may have an auditory processing disorder.
The following table was created by Patricia McAleer Hamaguchi, author of A Metacognitive Program for Treating Auditory Processing Disorders. This table contrasts the behaviors of children with good auditory processing skills with students who have difficult with these skills.
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Behaviors of Good Auditory Processor |
Behaviors of Poor Auditory Processor |
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Keeps body still |
Body is often moving or slumped |
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Keeps eyes focused on one spot |
Eyes often wander |
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Successfully shifts body and maintains attention |
Often looks around and loses attention when shifting body position |
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Requests clarification when confused |
Often passive, does not seak clarification until asked a question or prompted |
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Can repeat most or all words in a series, although word order may be reversed |
May forget all the words completely or substitute semantically unrelated words with same first sound |
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May make paraphrasing errors on sentence imitation tasks |
Often forgets entire sentence or recalls only the first or last part |
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Can be heard or seen subvocalizing during imitation tasks |
Often has blank look or wandering eyes before responding during imitation tasks |
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May forget details in a story, but recalls salient information and plot line |
May not have processed plot line at all; sometimes remembers unimportant information |
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Uses self-gesturing to help process and recall temporal or spatial directions |
Uses very little self-geturing during processing task, but may use it to supplement expressive language |
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Hears stories and reports ability to "see" it unfold, as when watching a movie |
Hears stories, but reports "seeing" nothing or only isolated content words |
Children may experience difficulties with listening for a variety of reasons including poor attention skills, medication, middle ear fluid build up or infection, hearing loss, emotional turmoil, or an Auditory Processing Disorder.