Can you understand tone of voice?
(humour, warning, friendly or teasing)

Pitch Perception

Further on, (in the colliculus), processing influences the ability to recognize the relationship between high and lower tones and the integration of sound with other sensory information (ie. vision). This ability to differentiate a higher from a lower tone is critical to distinguishing between a question and statement, and determining the tone of speech. Those with poor selectivity often can not hear the tone and therefore struggle to interpret the meaning.

So Pitch discrimination allows us to decode the emotional content of language and to identify if you are hearing a joke or sarcasm and to identify the most important part of an instruction. Those with poor pitch discrimination are often tired by the extra effort needed to understand those speaking to them. Poor pitch discriminators can also experience a chronic uncertainty about what is really meant by those speaking to them which is a significant cause of anxiety in the children we see.

These receptive language weaknesses undermine the development of ageappropriate language and communication skills. Another aspect of this is that those with weak pitch discrimination often find it hard to think clearly

and find it difficult to set out their thoughts on paper and may cause some symptoms of dyslexia.

Another significant deficit that we commonly observe in children with weak pitch discrimination is emotional immaturity. These children are easily upset by seemingly quite small matters in their daily routine.

How can listening therapy help?

In almost all cases, our bone conduction listening therapy is able to deliver age-appropriate pitch discrimination. The more powerful clinic-based equipment is the preferred choice for those with more significant deficits. As Selectivity opens, we tend to see emotional maturation, more fluid verbal and written expression, less anxiety and more energy. Clients also report feeling happier about themselves as their self-esteem rises.