Ad:

Impact of auditory processing on phonological functions

You can read this text in 2 min.

Impact of auditory processing on phonological functions

PantherMedia

Sound too intense

Auditory processing disorders can affect the development of phonological functions and, therefore, speech and literacy development. This is an extremely important aspect, especially in relation to childhood. These disorders may have their causes in the perception of sounds or in damage to the cortical centres responsible for normal hearing. However, many studies conducted to find a correlation between perception and phonological functions leave many doubts and do not provide clear answers.

Ad:

Sound stimuli reaching the central nervous system, can be correctly interpreted and fully exploited through correct auditory processing. Another aspect of the perception of sounds reaching us from the environment is phonological awareness, which is understood as the ability to perceive the sounds that a word consists of and to operate on them freely. Phonological operations, which are directly related to auditory processing, are the basis for the acquisition of reading and writing skills.

Auditory processing disorders, primarily refer to disturbances in the area of sound perception. This is caused by abnormalities in the neuronal functions of the afferent and efferent systems, as well as any damage to the cerebral cortex, which results in an impaired ability to hear.

Phonological functions themselves develop much earlier than reading and writing skills in children. It is through these functions that we are able to separate speech into smaller units, such sentences or words. Originally, phonological functions are responsible for identifying sounds and their length. At the next stage of development, we can speak of epistemic functions, which, based on intuition, allow us to divide words into syllables, form words from syllables or distinguish words with the same vowel. The metalinguistic functions are the most cognitively advanced and allow us to analyse the language we hear and to think about how it is used.

The relationship and correlations that exist between phonological awareness and auditory processing, despite many research attempts, have not been fully explained and described. What has been confirmed, however, is the link that exists between reading skills and phonological functions.

Current research opens up a wide field of discussion on the influence of auditory processing on phonological functions. Furthermore, the impact of possible disorders on the developmental processes that take place at different stages of human growth is also relevant. [1]