Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 20, 1993 TAG: 9304200156
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They certainly haven't been cured. But they have gotten better, in some cases dramatically.
They're more organized. They pay attention for longer times. They ask questions and focus on other people. A minority even has gotten off the medication for hyperactivity, or tested its way out of special education classes.
Their disabilities - including autistic behaviors, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, pervasive developmental delay and others - seem to have lessened, because of Auditory Integration Training, a treatment that is sweeping the country.
"When you're a parent of a child with special needs, you're constantly looking for ways to help the child be more successful," says one Roanoke Valley woman whose son has ADD and learning disabilities. "You win a few, you lose a few."
She and others in the valley say they think their children have benefited from AIT. Scientific proof is lacking, but the evidence, they say, is plain.
Auditory training was developed over the past 40 years by two French physicians, Alfred Tomatis and Guy Berard, whose work appeared to help many people with hypersensitive hearing or other hearing difficulties. Such problems can be major components of learning disabilities, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, pervasive developmental delay and autism, among other conditions.
Auditory trainers use an electronic device that randomly selects, then filters and modulates, or distorts, the sounds in recorded music as the person listens through headphones. The training takes place in two 30-minute sessions per day for 10 days - one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Audiograms, or hearing tests, are given to record hearing characteristics before, during and after the treatment to see what, if any, changes in hearing occur.
Aditi Silverstein, a speech and language pathologist who is director of Innovative Therapies Inc., in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Blacksburg, calls AIT "a sensory-based approach" to auditory processing. She and three staff members have been trained in the work, one by Berard, and two by Silverstein.
Unlike other speech and hearing therapies, AIT "goes right to the heart of the difficulty," Silverstein says.
Why it works remains a scientific mystery. There are several theories, many of which hold that whatever is happening, it's happening in the brain, and not just the middle or inner ear, Silverstein says.
Even knowing for whom AIT is likely to work still can be difficult to determine. Some people show great changes, some show little and some show none. Researchers are looking for answers.
Auditory training received a nationwide boost in 1990 with the publication of "The Sound of a Miracle," by Annabel Stehli. In the book, she described a vast improvement in her daughter Georgianna's autism after she received auditory training in France.
Georgianna Stehli Thomas eventually graduated from college, married and moved to Oregon, where she works for an auditory training researcher. Her story provided hope to parents searching for ways to help their children.
Georgianna's triumph was extraordinary. For others, the victories are smaller, but equally welcome.
Christopher Woods, 10, used to hate the sound of parrots shrieking when he went to the pet store. Power saws made him hysterical.
After undergoing auditory training at Innovative Therapies, he was able to shrug off the noise of parrots and tolerate, albeit nervously, the sound of workmen's saws.
Even better, says his mother, Maureen Woods of Roanoke, he is less aggressive in school.
"He is a mellower child," she says. "He has always been very active, very distractible, and we now realize that much of the distraction was probably from sounds that we were thinking weren't too distracting for him, but they were.
"He's not perfect . . . but he certainly has had a positive response to AIT."
The mother of a boy with attention deficit disorder believes her son is more organized, more responsible and better able to follow through on things.
"Children with ADD have a hard time focusing on the teacher because other things in the classroom, and down the hall, and outside, tend to gain their attention," she says.
"The training seemed to help him . . . to hear better, so he didn't concentrate on the other sounds, but on the sound of his teacher's voice." `Hearing equals way one behaves
The lack of scientific evidence bothers skeptics, but believers are unfazed.
"We believe it is a very important treatment for those people who suffer from hearing distortions," says Peter Stehli, husband of Annabel Stehli, stepfather of Georgianna and president of the Georgianna Organization in Westport, Conn.
Founded in January 1992, the organization is working to establish standards for auditory trainers, to encourage scientific research and to make it widely available - in short, "to make it a legitimately recognized discipline."
It also is promoting Berard's book, "Hearing Equals Behavior," which soon will be published in this country.
"We and Dr. Berard believe that hearing really equals the way you behave," Stehli says. For example, autistic children withdraw from everything outside themselves "because they hear more than they should and that affects the way they behave."
Auditory training helps reduce their sensitivity by re-educating the ear. That's one theory, at least. Others abound. Stehli says what people agree on is "that this simple treatment, which is not invasive and doesn't take very long, really does change the way people behave."
Innovative Therapies has treated more than 100 people since it began offering auditory training in May 1992, Silverstein says.
The 10-day treatments cost $1,200, including three audiograms and counseling and after-care - working with parents and teachers and other therapists to help the patients, who have included some adults, make the most of the changes.
A few insurance companies have paid much of the bill, some a portion. But many families have borne the expense themselves.
The mother of a 9-year-old boy with learning disabilities who took the training last year said her insurer covered 80 percent of the cost. But she gladly would have paid the full amount herself, she says. When she realized that help might be available for her son, "money became irrelevant."
Before proceeding, she discussed the treatments with her son's pediatrician, neurologist, speech therapists and teachers. "I got good reactions from everybody," she says.
Her son seems to hear better now, and has more confidence. Like many who have been trained, he had a relapse a few months later, when he acted hyperactive for a couple of weeks. But his behavior is stable again.
"We were at the point where it couldn't hurt to try it," she says. "If he didn't improve, at least I would have tried."
`Something is happening'
Silverstein has traveled to Richmond and Charlottesville to treat people and speak about AIT. She and Dr. Roger Ruth, director of communicative disorders at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and Christine Blincoe, an audiologist with the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center at UVa, have conducted a small study of AIT.
They tested the hearing of patients before, during and after they took auditory training.
"We saw 11 patients, and . . . for three of those patients, it made a dramatic change in their hearing," Blincoe says.
The others showed no great changes, but their overall behavior during the testing seemed calmer.
The study group was too small to allow for conclusions, Blincoe says, "but something is happening for these kids and adults.
"We intend to look further and do a lot more physiological testing to see if there are actually changes with the ear mechanism itself."
Recordings used in the training are carefully selected, Silverstein says. Her office in Roanoke includes compact discs of Fleetwood Mac, Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder and Carly Simon, among others.
Through the headphones, the sounds can be irritating. Some patients reject the headset at first, perhaps because for once, they're encountering sounds they can't block out, Silverstein says. Most learn to accept the headphones, she says.
One Roanoke Valley woman who has an autistic son in his late teens learned of AIT from a friend whose grandson was going through it for his attention deficit disorder.
The woman read about the training and called Silverstein for the names of people whose relatives had taken it. Later, she called them for their impressions.
"When we first heard of it, I got the literature and showed it to my husband, and he said, `Oh, God, another con,' " she says.
"I just said, `Read the literature.' And he read it and didn't say anything that evening. The next morning . . . he said, `Call them up. Go ahead and make the arrangements.' "
Their son took the training. His mother reports he has better eye contact, improved ability to understand and answer "why" questions and more spontaneity in conversation.
"You can't hold a good conversation with him," she says, "but . . . he comes up with more by himself."
Her advice to other parents of children with special needs?
"I would tell them to look into it, but don't expect a cure. It might help and it might not."
Her son was helped, but he wasn't cured.
"He still has autism," she says.
by CNB