Information

Johansen Individualized Auditory Stimulation (JIAS)
Johansen Individualized Auditory Stimulation is an individualized frequency and hemispheric-specific music-based auditory training programme. It was developed by Dr. Kjeld V. Johansen from Denmark more than 30 years ago and is used in around 22 countries worldwide.

Johansen IAS Providers from Europe, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand meet regularly to exchange information and ideas and further develop the method.

Application:
In many cases our listening skills can be improved following a period of several months of regular individualised auditory stimulation.

The Johansen Individualised Auditory Stimulation programme involves listening to specially composed music recordings adapted to the individual’s listening skills. These are played over a period of several weeks for approximately 10 minutes per day. The music is listened to at home or school using standard headphones and a CD player, smartphone or tablet. The music, which was specifically developed for the listening training, was created by the composer Bent Peder Holbech (Denmark).

JIAS can be helpful for children, adolescents and adults in the following areas:

Improvement of hearing function where there are difficulties with auditory processing and perception 

Improved ATTENTION AND CONCENTRATION in background noise

Improved READING AND WRITING, when difficulties are due to auditory issues

Improvements in LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT and LANGUAGE CONFIDENCE

Improvements in SPEECH volume, clarity and intonation

Symptoms:

Symptoms which can often be seen where there are difficulties with listening and in processing what has been heard may include:

- Misunderstanding what is heard

- Short attention span and concentration problems

- Confusion between similar sounding words

- Hesitant and / or indistinct speech

- Problems understanding longer passages of speech

- Hypersensitivity to certain noises

- Difficulties singing in tune

- Flat and monotonous voice

- Poor reading

- Letter substitutions or sequencing errors

- Many spelling mistakes

Causes:

Hearing
Frequent ear, nose and throat infections in early childhood, which lead to temporary impairments of hearing, may have severely impaired the development of sound discrimination abilities. Also insufficient or inappropriate auditory stimulation, including exposure to a constant loud noise can affect the ability to listen carefully. Not only hearing too little, but also hearing too well (hyperacusis) is a problem for some people. Hearing too well means that you are not able to filter out or ignore background noises.

For many children and also adults, distraction by any sound is all too frequent. This can have profound effects, for example, on learning and behaviour.

Attention

The challenges experienced by a child who has listening problems can be very varied. Whether they hear some sounds too well or not well enough, the effort required for effective listening will be greater than it should be.

The effort required to maintain concentration and to understand what is said may be so great as to prevent the child from attending to anything else at the same time. This may result in frustration and exhaustion affecting overall attention.

Improved ability to listen effectively results in less effort being required to concentrate well. The child is better able to understand spoken language, memorise longer sentences and their confidence increases. Both spoken and written language skills improve as a result.

 Auditory processing
An unrecognized number of students who have not been examined have learning difficulties because they can not process what they hear effectively and quickly.

This makes it difficult for them to concentrate on the teacher's voice, they can be distracted by many noises, they can find it difficult to process lengthy instructions and are generally slow in the processing of tasks.

Reproachful exclamations like: "Can`t you hear?"may indicate an underlying weakness in processing what has been heard.

According to results from the USA (Galaburda, Tallal, Merzenich), many children with language problems have a fundamental difficulty in understanding and distinguishing the rapidly changing sounds of the spoken language. For many children with such auditory limitations, it is true that they have learned to speak late in childhood. However, even if the language acquisition was timely, important phases, e.g. the detailed analysis of the sounds, which are of great importance for reading and writing, may have been omitted. The child cannot then hear the difference between similar or composite sounds such as p and b, ng, and nk. If these sounds are the same for the child, it follows that they are also written alike. What a child can not properly hear, it can not speak and write correctly.

Laterality:

Anyone who prefers to listen to the left ear or have a clearly preferred ear does not process speech and sounds so effectively and quickly. Phonems heard from the right ear are forwarded to the main speech center in the left half of the brain as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the sounds heard by the left ear are first transmitted to the lower speech center in the right hemisphere, and then to the left for processing. This means a measurable delay. The Danish teacher Dr. Kjeld Johansen has established a significant relationship between left-ear hearing and dyslexia. In a child who has no preferred ear, it may happen that sounds or syllables reach the brain in a different order than the one they have in the word. Thus, e.g. the word "pet" is heard as "cat" and also written.

Training:

Prerequisites for the performance of an auditory training are free auditory canals as well as the exclusion of sound conduction disturbances. Medical causes should be excluded by an ENT physician. For an exact clarification and discussion with a Johansen povider for children and adults are in each case initial checklists available. These can be sent to you by a JIAS provider in your region. The users (listed and authorized on each webside from the national JIAS webpage) perform a detailed examination of various hearing functions. Please make an appointment with a JIAS provider in your region. According to the results of the check, it can then be decided whether a hearing training is meaningful and feasible. Listening is connected with other sensory systems of our body. It is to be assessed individually whether an auditory stimulation is appropriate for the respective patient and whether the functions in the patient's daily life can be positively supported by an optimized hearing situation. Only then should a hearing training be conducted according to Johansen. If a hearing training is chosen, an individual JIAS-CD adapted to the personal listening skills or, on request, a hearing-training file with music will be created.

The listening training music is always created individually. In most cases, this is heard for 6-12 weeks at 4-7 weekdays about 10-15 minutes per day at home. High-quality, standard stereo headphones and a CD-R compatible stereo CD player or a smartphone / tablet with headphone jack are required. After completing the listening period of the music, a new hearing assessment will be performed. On the basis of the updated results it can be decided whether another JIAS music is recommended. As a rule, a total of 4-6 hearing-training music are listened to in order to achieve the best possible result. The prices for the hearing assessment and for the JIASmusic vary according to the individual effort and will be communicated to you by your JIAS provider upon request. On request, a music data can be stored instead of a CD, so that listening is possible via a smartphone / tablet. The aim of the project is to listen to the sound processing and to listen to the frequency - specific JIAS music, which is tuned individually to the listening skills, Perception. In doing so, the cooperation of both ears is to be positively supported so that the tone and speech perception can be optimized overall. Also, the development and consolidation of a particular ear preference can be helpful and encouraging for overall hearing. The aim is to achieve the best possible sensitivity, in particular of the areas relevant to the language. Parallel funding in general, an interdisciplinary exchange with physicians and / or therapists is also sought. For example, problems with motor coordination and balance functions are often observed in children with hearing impairment problems and speech disorders as well as language development disorders. Here, a parallel promotion is recommended by appropriate therapists. In children or adolescents with reading spelling difficulties, it is recommended to use a special method to carry out a reading and spelling exercise program involving several senses. Very important for a positive course of hearing training is the regular listening of the music according to the individual hearing instructions.