Auditory Attention Difficulties due to Poor Selectivity (selective attention)

Another common auditory attention problem relates to selective attention. Selective attention is viewed as the ability to know to what one must attend. In essence, the problem is in selecting the relevant information and filtering out the irrelevant. For example, if a teacher said, "There will be a test in two days," and some children next to the child with auditory selective attention difficulties said, "Let’s get together tomorrow and study," the child with the APD attention problem may process the message as "There will be a test tomorrow, so study."

To simulate auditory selective attention difficulties, the next message will include a combination of relevant and irrelevant information. Your task is to filter out the irrelevant and figure out the correct message.

                    Little Jack and Jill Horner sat went up in the corner

If you figured out the message (or read the answer) you would know that it contains the complete versions of both Little Jack Horner and Jack and Jill. But, how would you know which is the relevant message? What if we increased the font of the words in the relevant message and decreased the font of the irrelevant message? This is what happens if a child with auditory attention problems, especially involving selective attention, uses an accommodation known as an FM system. This device amplifies (increases in loudness) the teacher’s voice (to a comfortable level) while decreasing the loudness of background noises. Now, here is the same message as above, modified as if through an FM system.

                    Little Jack and Jill Horner sat went up in the corner

crown and said "What Jill came a tumbling good boy am after I."

Is it easier to see the two nursery rhymes now? It should be much simpler to read the relevant one, Jack and Jill. Therefore, increasing the volume (font) of relevant speech can certainly make it easier to understand. 

Auditory Attention and Focusing: Effects of Linguistic Knowledge and Familiarity

One factor often overlooked with some children who have auditory attention problems relates to loss of focus because of the difficulties in decoding and comprehending messages. This factor is the difficulty level of the language used. That is, the child may have a language based processing problem and the child does not understand the vocabulary or concepts presented in the message. The information may be unfamiliar because of lack of experiences or difficulties with auditory processing in early life that led to the child not having a sufficient language base for understanding the material.

To simulate this type of problem in attention and focusing due to lack of knowledge and familiarity with the words, concepts, and information in a message, the following text was chosen because the poem presented contains very unfamiliar language and may not be well known to some readers. Furthermore, to make it even more difficult, irrelevant words have been added to simulate background noise and there is no spacing between words to add a time or temporal processing deficit to the simulation. See if you can figure out the poem.

Well, you did figure out the poem? How about we improve your temporal processing and add the spaces between words. Here, try again.

                    One twas has brillig and the slithy cows toves

                    Did look gyre and gimble water in the wabe street

                    All mimsy lights were the borogroves house

                    And the mome dogs raths cats outgrabe.

Have you figured out the poem yet? Is it about the cow jumping over the moon? Or is it about water in the street? Well, let’s try an FM system. In this simulation, the relevant words are made larger, and the irrelevant words smaller.

                    One twas has brillig and the slithy cows toves

                    Did look gyre and gimble water in the wabe street

                    All mimsy lights were the borowgroves house

                    And the mome dogs raths cats outgrabe.

Still can’t figure it out? The words are in English; olde English. It is a poem written by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland and related works. The title of this poem is Jabberwocky.  

View lyrics used for simulation.

So, it is difficult to know to what you should attend when the vocabulary is unfamiliar and strange. Helping a child with an auditory attention problem become familiar with the vocabulary and concepts the teachers may use in presenting information in class can be a great help for improving focusing, attending and maintaining attention.

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