Awaken Listening and Autism             Hypersensitivity to  sound                                                                 Tactile  Defensiveness                           Language and Autism

What is Autism:

Very briefly Autism is a developmental disorder that in the case of  regressive autism usually becomes aparent somewhere around 2 years of age. Classic autism is apparent right from  birth on.  Autism affects approximately 1 out of every 250  children. It is four times more likely to affect boys than girls, but girls affect are more likely to be severely  affected. Autism is found throughout the world and knows no racial, ethnic or social boundaries.

The symptoms of Autism show  up in the form of sensory integration problems and very often is  accompanied by severe communication and social difficulties.

Awaken Listening and Autism:
There is no known cure for Autism at present.  Awaken Listening  can however, greatly improve the lives of autistic people by giving them a sense  of their body in space as well as improving their communication  skills.  This serves as a doorway to learning and provides the  client with the necessary tools to learn, learning however still requires the appropriate data which is input through the various other therapies like O.T. S&L Behavior intervention and social skills groups that autistic  children typically receive. Maximum results are seen when all these come together, and the child continues the other therapies  in conjunction to doing Awaken Listening.

Awaken Listening stimulates  the brain through stimulation of the auditory and vestibular  systems, reducing symptoms of autism in varying degrees in each  individual. Like any individual, each autistic person is different and will therefore respond differently to the program, this is why it is critical to follow the persons progress very closely and individualize the program to the individuals responses and needs. In some cases results become apparent within the  first few weeks, in others it takes longer. At any  rate, progress is never lenear. The general trend is however generally upwards.  The protocol of the program needs to be  changed to accommodate the severe hyper and hypo sensitivities the  autistic population lives with and often takes far longer than the  regular protocol as the process must be slowed down to accommodate  for each individuals need. Improvements in the following areas can  be expected: 

Hypersensitivity to  sound:
The person is better able to handle loud continuous sound or noise like movies or fireworks etc.

The person starts to become  aware of their surroundings as well as people and themselves.

Stimming and tantrums  diminish as they start to communicate and are therefore less  frustrated by not being able to express their needs.

Attention and Focus  improves accelerating the benefits of all the other therapies the child is receiving.

The reason why the autistic population is hypersensitive to sounds is because of the  way in which human beings listen. We listen not only with our ears but our entire bodies through bone and skin that are fine conductors of sound.  We are finding out that the autistic population, listens predominantly with their bodies. The sound that is picked up by their bodies goes directly to their brains,  bypassing their ears whose function is to either dampen loud noises or amplify soft sounds, while also filtering out unwanted  background noise allowing people to tune in or pay attention to only the relevant sounds.  The autistic population is therefore  continually bombarded with all kinds of noise and are therefore unable to focus because of over stimulation of the senses and so they either shut down and tune completely out or they tantrum to try and deal with the over stimulation.  Thus when working with the  autistic population we are very conscious of this and take care to  move their reception of sound from bone to their ears so that sound can be processed as it was meant to be. Our headphones are equipped  with both specialized bone conductors as well as state of the art air conductors, through which sound is manipulated to slowly desensitize the client to bone conduction forcing them into using  primarily their ears.  We use the music of Mozart because it is very gentle and has been found to be the most efficient least  intrusive way of helping the autistic population deal with their  hypersensitivities to sound, which in turn reduces tactile  defensiveness as the skin is calmed down, allowing the skin to be  used in its intended way to feel texture, temperature  etc.

Tactile  Defensiveness:
As tactile defensiveness decreases the person reaches out to explore the world around and learns from this experience.  They become more apt to interact with others and are more social.

The child freed from tactile defensiveness will become more affectionate wanting hugs and cuddles.

Reduced tactile  defensiveness leads to a willingness to try new foods increasing the  range of foods they eat.

Language difficulties and Autism:
Receptive as well as expressive language improves as the child is better able to reap the benefits of the S&L therapy it receives. They often start  humming and singing.  If language already exists it becomes more structured and the child uses longer sentences. Pronunciation improves and they start referring to themselves in the first person and not by their name. Improved language skills progresses into a  desire to communicate and socialize with others.

Listening to themselves  speak they see themselves as more like other people and their self  image improves they are more confident.

Hypersensitivity is easy to  spot as the person will often cover their ears, burst into tantrums to shut out the sounds or will repeat the same words over and over again.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis as we have mentioned earlier discovered that we can only produce the sounds that we can hear. Thus listening to oneself becomes very important to the use of language and communication and is therefore by default the basis of our need or want to communicating with others. He found that it is in fact the ear that controls speech,  not only words but the intensity, flow, articulation, sentence  structure, emotion etc.

We listen to the world through our ears but we listen to ourselves through our bone, and  are thus able to monitor our speech. The autistic population doesn't  have this mechanism as they hear everything through all the inlets and often shut down completely not only to the outside world but to  themselves as well as the stimulation is just to intense and totally senseless.  Communication of any sort thus becomes very  difficult and painful if not impossible.

Awaken Listening trains  these clients to listen to themselves during the expressive phase with the help of a microphone that is connected to the equipment  allowing for the manipulation of the clients own voice in real time so that they perceive their own voice through the headset in their right ear soon after having received it through their bone with the help of the bone conductor attached to the headset.  Even our  nonverbal clients must go through this phase with the help of our  trained staff who guide them through the process getting them to  make what ever sounds they can and trying to structure it so that the client is aware of the sound he/she makes, so that they can  connect with themselves.  This phase opens their articulation,  increases expressive and receptive language, heightens their  listening skills, their control over their voice increases in turn  helping them to develop a sense of self and gives them an awareness of their bodies they lack, allowing the autistic person to reconnect  with not only themselves but the world around them.

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