Jan 17, 2011 Alida Venter

Glue ear may lead to Auditory Processing Difficulties, which contributes to reading and spelling problems in Dyslexia. Auditory Stimulation rectifies this.

Two of the common symptoms of dyslexia are reading and spelling problems – both made worse by ‘glue ear’ or ‘conductive hearing loss’. this may occur in a child who suffered from frequent colds and throat infections in the first five years of his life. this in turn may lead to Auditory Processing Difficulties, in which the developing brain does not make the links between the sounds it hears. Auditory Stimulation can rectify this; by ‘training’ the ear to be sensitive to the frequencies in which letter sounds appear, while limiting background noises that distract the child.

‘Glue ear’ contributes to a delay in phonemic awareness, which is the ability to hear that words are made up of smaller sounds and syllables, like ‘c-a-t’ or ‘in-ter-est-ing’. if a child cannot hear clearly, it will be unable to hear the difference between words like ‘pin’ and ‘thin’, or ‘fan’ and ‘van’. this delay in phonemic awareness may cause lifelong difficulties, diagnosed as ‘dyslexia’, if it is not corrected at a very early stage.

The most common treatment for ‘glue ear’ is the insertion of a tiny tube or grommet into the child’s ear. It allows the fluid to drain off so that the child’s hearing is restored. another treatment is the removal of the tonsils, which are sometimes the cause of repeated middle ear infections, contributing to ‘glue ear’.

Although the resulting delay in phonemic awareness is still present, this may contributes to further Auditory Processing Problems/Difficulties that usually are not picked up until the child goes to school and fails to learn and progress in reading and writing. It is best to take the child for professional assessment by a Language and Speech Therapist for Auditory Processing Disorder.

Due to ‘glue ear’ or the reoccurring middle-ear infections the child’s sensitivity to hear certain frequencies of sound is reduced. this results that the child hears sounds incorrectly because the frequencies in which speech sounds are heard are usually mostly affected.

Auditory stimulation can be very useful in this situation. It stimulates/trains the ear to hear the sounds correctly, which it heard incorrectly before. An example of such stimulation, also known as ‘Sound Therapy,’ is the auditory stimulation program called JIAS. It was developed by Dr. Kjeld Johansen, of the Baltic Dyslexic Institute. The child listens to an individualized music CD for 10 minutes a day, for six days a week. Every eight to twelve weeks the child is re-assessed, by using an audiometer, to determine the child’s sensitivity to different frequencies. After each assessment, a new individualized CD is produced, to which the child listens to for the following 8-12 weeks. this procedure is very affordable for parents.

Dyslexia characteristics such as difficulties with spelling, are due to phonological processing problems/difficulties. this is the matching of letters to the sounds they make; both on their own and in pairs or groups. as we’ve seen, ‘glue ear’ contributes to phonemic awareness problems, worsening phonological processing problems.

Observing spelling errors in short, simple words is a way in which most dyslexic children first come to the teacher’s attention. Examples of such words, which cause particular difficulty are: ‘any many, island, said, they, because, enough’ and ‘friend’.

Other words that may be spelled incorrectly are the words that are not spelled in the way that you would expect them to be spelled, if our English spelling system were rational or sensible (phonic). Examples are ‘does’ as ‘dus’ ‘please’ as ‘pleeze’, ‘knock’ as ‘nock’, ‘search’ as ‘serch’, ‘journey’ as ‘jerney’ and ‘blue’ as ‘bloo’.

Dyslexic children also experience difficulties with ‘jumbled spelling’. These are words in which all the correct letters are present, but they are written in the wrong order. Examples includes the following words: ‘deos/does’, ‘freind/friend’, ‘siad/said’ ‘bule/blue’ ‘becuase/because’ and ‘wores/worse’.

Problems with ‘jumbled spellings’ show that a child is experiencing difficulty with visual memory. during visual memory, our brain creates a memory of things we have seen. The child with phonemic awareness problems due to ‘glue ear’ may then try to remember the shape and ‘picture’ of a word. but the visual memory of a dyslexic child may not be adequate for this task.

This problem of insufficient visual memory and phonemic awareness can make reading difficult. These phonemic awareness problems may also make other dyslexic problems such as difficulty with visual tracking, writing letters or numbers backwards, confusion over left and right (laterality), sequencing problems, difficulties copying words, word order and following two- or three-step instruction during spelling instructions, worse.

Doing an phonics program after the auditory stimulation can improve overall phonemic awareness, which in turn can help improve other dyslexic characteristics also.

Dyslexia Symptoms, Dyslexia-teacher.com, Retrieved on 15 January 2011.

Bradford, J., Teaching of Children with Dyslexia, Direct Learning Limited, MA, 2005, pages 11-37.

Stowe, C., How to Reach and Teach Children and Teens with Dyslexia, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, CA, 2000, pages 1-13.

Johansen Individualized Auditory Stimulation, Sound Therapy, Smartlearning.co.nz, Retrieved on 15 January 2011.

What Johansen IAS involves, Johansenias.com, Retrieved on 15 January 2011.