Auditory processing deficits and classroom performance in ADHD students

Auditory Stimulation: Its effect on the ADHD student

The presence of students with ADHD in the classroom is an increasingly common occurrence. Teachers must be aware of possible methods to improve the behavior and performance of students with this disability. One commonly occurring characteristic of ADHD is defective processing of auditory information. Methods using or minimizing auditory stimuli are explored, with an emphasis on how teachers can either implement certain techniques or refer students to practitioners for necessary treatment. The physiology involved in the processing of auditory information is discussed, as well as research into how sound can help or hinder the performance of children with ADHD

The typical classroom environment is encompassed by several stimuli. General activity, talking, and background noise may all serve as distractions to students that need to pay attention in order to learn. Disruptive stimuli may especially pose a challenge for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a debilitating learning disability characterized by distractibility, impulsiveness, and an inability to pay attention in a sufficient manner. ADHD has become an increasingly common problem among American children, and some would argue that the occurrence of this disorder in the general population is growing consistently (Jackson, 2003). Therefore, teachers need to have a heightened awareness of this disorder and how the classroom environment may be contributing to the difficulties experienced by children with ADHD, as well as how the atmosphere provided within the classroom may help to facilitate learning for these learning disabled students.

Noise in the classroom is unavoidable. The sound of the teacher's voice echoing through the room, pencils grinding in pencil sharpeners, the murmur of students' chatting, and even the sound of pages of a book turning are all familiar auditory stimuli found in the classroom. How does noise affect the concentration and learning performance of students with ADHD? Why do students with ADHD react in certain ways to auditory stimuli? Is there a way that auditory stimuli may be helpful to these students? What can teachers do to improve the classroom in order to facilitate learning for students with ADHD?

Auditory processing and ADHD

The way children with ADHD process auditory stimuli fundamentally differs from normal children. Understanding these differences helps to elucidate the nature of ADHD and may indicate possible options for improving the learning conditions for students with the disorder. Often measures using auditory stimuli, such as the stop-signal task (Quay, 1997) and indications of electrodermal activity during listening tasks are used in the diagnosed ADHD. For instance, Shibaki et al. (1993) found that lower arousal and shorter attention spans among individuals with ADHD is demonstrated by decreased amplitude of skin conductance response with both passive and active listening tasks. In another study using auditory stimuli, Pearson et al. (1991) revealed that hyperactive children have difficulty reorienting to a switch in dichotically presented auditory stimuli. In other words, ADHD subjects could not switch their attention from one ear to the other. This indicates that the auditory reorientation skills of hyperactive children may be underdeveloped. Recognizing how sounds in the classroom contribute to the distraction and impulsiveness will only serve to improve conditions for students with ADHD.

Why do certain children experience ADHD and others do not? Quay (1997) believes that the answer to this question lies with the behavioral inhibition system (BIS). This is the system that conditionally responds to stimuli for punishment, non-reward, novelty and stimuli of innate fear in order to bring about passive avoidance and extinction. The output of this system causes the stopping of ongoing behavior, an increase in arousal, and the focusing of attention on environmental cues that are relevant to the present situation. The BIS controls the inhibition of responding learned under the threat of non-reward and punishment. ADHD is essentially a disorder characterized by the inability to inhibit responses even when faced with imminent punishment, such as a student who continually exhibits disruptive behavior in the classroom even though the child is aware that this behavior leads to punishment. Therefore, it makes sense to Quay (1997) that the roots of ADHD are grounded in the BIS.

One way of examining dis-inhibition involving auditory stimuli among children with ADHD is to us the stop-signal task. Subjects are instructed to perform a motor response to a target in a continuous performance task. They are also instructed not to respond to the target when an auditory signal is presented. The results indicated that the children with ADHD inhibited fewer responses than the controls. Therefore, the ADHD group was unable to stop a motor response when given an auditory signal, and shows the impulsiveness that is so prevalent in this disorder. If an auditory signal is ineffective in stopping a current, ongoing behavior exhibited by students with ADHD, teachers may have to adapt their communication and disciplining techniques in order to improve the behavior and performance of these students.

On the physiological level, researchers have found that distractible children, including children with ADHD, exhibit abnormal processing of auditory information. Kilpelainen et al. (1999) looked at the P300 event-related potential (ERP) at different points during an auditory stimulus discrimination task in a group of children who were either easily distractible or non-distractible. The easily distractible children showed a short-latency P300 response throughout the entire task, whereas the non-distractible group displayed a smaller corresponding response and the response got decreasingly smaller throughout the task. The short-latency P300 response indicates that the brain is utilizing its orienting networks, and this response decreases in size when stimuli become familiar and lose their novelty. Therefore, the persistent P300 response exhibited by the distractible children suggests that they are continually trying to orient to stimuli that should already be familiar and processed. This may indicate that instruction through auditory stimuli may not be as effective for students with ADHD because they can not properly encode and categorize the information due to their distractibility. Furthermore, if auditory instruction is used in the classroom, consistent repetition or maybe pairing of auditory information with visual stimuli may be necessary.

Impulsivity is common among children with ADHD. The extent to which this characteristic is affected by auditory stimuli was examined in a study by Gray et al. (2002). The researchers looked at how normal children and children with ADHD responded to auditory stimuli that was presented in a predictable, semi-predictable, or unpredictable manner. The findings indicated that in conditions where the background sounds were unpredictable, all children, both normal and ADHD, exhibited impulsiveness. However, the two groups of children diverged in the conditions of semi-predictable and predictable sounds. It appeared that children with ADHD became impulsive at lower levels of uncertainty in comparison to the normal children. Therefore, the researchers concluded that increasing the predictability of background sounds might reduce impulsivity among students with ADHD. Teachers may incorporate these findings into the classroom by finding ways to eliminate or at least reduce the occurrence of unpredictable, random and spontaneous background sounds in the classroom. Doing so may result in a marked improvement in the performance of students with ADHD.

Another characteristic commonly found among children with ADHD is impairment in psychological sense of time. Studies using auditory stimuli have also been used in the study of this phenomenon. West et al. (2000) obtained data from both children with ADHD and children in a control group using the Time Perception Application, in which the subjects performed both visual and auditory time reproduction tasks. The results indicated that ADHD subjects showed larger errors on visual reproduction tasks than the control subjects, but no difference between the groups were observed for the auditory time reproduction task. With the auditory reproduction task both the ADHD group and the control group consistently underestimated the time durations to be reproduced. How can these findings translate into the classroom setting? Teachers may find it valuable to incorporate a balanced amount of visual and auditory stimuli into their instructional methods.

Conclusion

Teachers play a powerful role in the lives of young people. When children are faced with learning challenges such as ADHD, the classroom may be a stressful environment for everyone involved, including the child themselves, the teacher, other students and parents. There are several therapeutic modalities incorporating auditory stimuli that teachers can use that have proven to be successful in improving the performance of children with ADHD. Whether it is something subtle like background music during tasks requiring sustained attention, or a referral to a focused, intense treatment such as auditory integration training, auditory-based methods work due to the fact that the way children with ADHD process auditory information is distinctly different than that of children without this disability. Above all, awareness of the benefits of treatments involving auditory stimuli is of the utmost importance for both teachers and parents since ADHD affects not only academic success but general well-being as well.

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