Autism ADD PDD AIT Sensory Auditory Integration Therapy Hyperacusis

Frequently Asked Questions:

How many times should my child listen to the EASe CDs per day
We recommend two EASe listening sessions per day, usually starting at a low volume and lasting anywhere from a minimum of one song to a maximum of 30 minutes. If your child does not have trouble with tactile hypersensitivity and can wear headphones, you can start at 30 minutes with a low volume. If your child wants to run around and play before the end of the session, then cut back the duration and gradually build up the session time over the next few days.

Can I let my child listen while asleep?
Yes you can let them listen during sleeping time. We usually recommend a "boom box" placed next to the child while they sleep. Do not play it too loud. It is not necessary. Never play it more than 30 minutes, even in their sleep.

My child cannot stand to wear headphones. Can my child listen to EASe CDs with different method than headphones?
Headphones are absolutely the most effective way to play the EASe CD music for a child. However if your child is tactile hypersensitive, then car speakers, home stereo, "boom box" and other methods are less effective, but acceptable.

How long until I see results?
We do not evaluate every child who's parents buy EASe CDs, so we cannot tell who will benefit and who will not. For those children for whom the EASe CDs are appropriate, some react immediately and some take up to three months. An immediate response can be a sense of calm when listening to the EASe CDs, as well as improved eye contact, language improvement, balance and general well being.

Do the EASe CDs cure Autism?
The EASe CDs do not CURE Autism, Downs Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy or any other complex brain injury, which tend to be the underlying cause of auditory hypersensitivity. The EASe CDs train an individual's brain to habituate to noise and better manage environmental sound, leading to improved physical, mental and emotional adjustment. If used by themselves, the condition that caused the hypersensitivity in the first place will eventually cause it to return, requiring another listening session every six months or so. When used in conjunction within a successful holistic approach to treatment, the auditory hypersensitivity need not ever return.

Which EASe CD should I purchase?
If you are sure you child is auditory hypersensitive, by either their actions then you should purchase as many EASe CDs as you can afford.

If you are sure your child is auditory hypersensitive, (outward signs are covering ears, crying at sounds, avoiding loud environments, etc) or a diagnosis, we recommend that you buy as many EASe CDs as you can afford and start your listening program right away. Each CD can be listened to for a maximum of ten hours, and longer programs are more effective than shorter ones. In this way, you will give your child the maximum variability in their listening sessions and the best chance for success.

If you are not sure your child is auditory hypersensitive, (sometimes children become auditory defensive and appear more deaf than hypersensitive, but this IS auditory hypersensitivity) then just purchase EASe CD #1 and give it a try for the ten hours. If you see positive results (eye contact, communication, reduced stimming, better attention, improved calmness) then start a longer program immediately.

Should I play the EASe CDs in order every time?
No. You should randomly shuffle their use, so that your child can never tell what EASe CD is coming next. This is to reduce predictability and help the auditory stimulation on the discs be as surprising as possible to your child.

Should I play each song in order?
No. You should also play them in Shuffle or Random mode on your player for the same reason.

Do you have recommendations regarding using headphones for
recreational use after using your CDs for therapy?
Yes we do. Be careful to monitor noise from any source including headphones. A very loud noise could re-trigger a sensory defensive response in a child who has up to that point, been trained to manage their sensory defensiveness through EASe or AIT. There is nothing inherently bad about recreational use of headphones other than the potential of loud noise. If you allow your child to wear recreational headphones, be vigilant. Many hypersensitive children scream at certain noises and then listen to headphones at levels that an average person would consider painful.

Headphones are different from other noise sources in one very important way. Many children with auditory hypersensitivity have also suffered from repeated ear infections. Therefore it is very important to keep them protected from further infection. DO NOT allow other children to wear your child's headphones. That is similar to letting them drink from your child's cup, also a bad idea.

What kind of headphones and CD player should I purchase?
You will need a CD player that can play Shuffle or Random mode and play CD-R discs along with a high quality pair of headphones. We recommend Sony 7506 headphones that can be purchased online for around $100.00. You player should not cost more than $75.00 and can be purchased from Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal Mart or other major retailer.

Can I put the EASe CD on my ipod?
In the past I have recommended that parents NOT transfer their EASe files to iPod because invariably they error when importing the file into iTunes and end up with an AAC file, thinking they have an uncompressed .wav file. The same thing goes for any other MP3 players as well. There are many incorrect assertions that muddy the water further with regards to audio quality and compression. These are peddled by manufacturers selling modern music players that are far inferior to devices marketed twenty five years ago. When the health of a child is at stake, it is better to error on the side of safety and effectiveness.

However, as it is possible, if you do it right to get an iPod to play truly uncompressed .wav files, I will go through the procedure for proper transfer.

Transferring (not encoding) uncompressed .wav files into iTunes requires that you set up the iTunes preferences BEFORE transfer not AFTER. This has tripped up many, many parents to the point that I just suggest that they not attempt it.

First however, lets talk about quality and lossless and lossy compression like MP3, AAC and others. There are NO compression algorithms of high quality enough to compress the data on an EASe CD!

Please understand this point.

ALL compression algorithms are sensory based. Their developers create them by testing the perception of average people and determining what elements of sound are NOT perceived under certain circumstances and which are, and then throwing away the elements that are not perceived.

Brain injured children afflicted with auditory hypersensitivity DO NOT exhibit the same perception profiles as neurological typical individuals. The highest frequency elements in an EASe CD are the MOST valuable and above a fairly low ceiling cannot be heard by most NT's. EASe CDs use ALL the energy, dynamic range and frequency response of the 16bit, 44.1kHz audio CD format. Only an uncompressed transfer of the .wav files will work for your children.

If you insist on using your iPod, DO NOT use the iPod ear buds. They will not work with EASe CDs. They just don't have the high frequency response necessary. Almost all of the other ear buds will fail as well. Use Sony 7506 or better headphones.

A stereo .wav file takes approximately 10 MB per minute of hard drive space, making a singe EASe CD approximately 650 MB. This means that a parent will need at least an 8Gig iPod Nano to hold all 11 EASe CDs. This is fine, but at $250.00, the 8Gig Nano is about four times more expensive than a CD player and there will be much less space for all the other music a parent may want to put on their iPod. It could also take you as long as five hours to transfer the dozens of EASe CD tracks to iTunes and then over to the iPod.

If you still want to put the files on your iPod then continue reading.

Start iTunes. BEFORE attempting to import the files, click on the iTunes tab and then scroll down to Preferences. Click on the Importing tab. Select WAV Encoder on the Import Using tab. Next click on the Setting tab and select Custom. Set the Sample Rate to 44.100 kHz, the Sample Size to 16 bit and Channels to Stereo. Click OK. Click OK in the bottom right corner of the panel. You can then click on Advanced and scroll down to Convert Selection to WAV. Once that is done you can then transfer the .wav file to your iPod.

DO NOT succumb to the idea that a little compression will be ok! Apple calls AAC lossless audio compression. This is just not true. Any compression will cripple the effectiveness of the EASe CDs and their ability to help your child.

Have you ever heard of anyone become more sensitive to sound after using the EASe CDs?
Certain children, especially children older than ten years, become expert at sensory defensiveness. To them, sensory information is disturbing and dangerous. They block out sounds and self-stim to block out visual stimulation. They refuse to allow anything to touch their heads and avoid contact with other people.

The EASe CD is designed to chip away at the sensory wall these children build up over the years, by introducing high intensity, low duration auditory stimulation. When this stimulation starts to become effective, the children start to loose control of their sensory diet. This is a good thing, but can be temporarily disturbing to a small percentage of children. However, if we don’t bring down that wall, they will never escape from their prison.

If your child becomes temporarily more sensitive to noise after listening to the EASe CDs, do not stop. Just reduce the volume and session duration, to make the transition easier on your child. Eventually, nearly every child works through this stage and learns to properly manage their sensory diet without blocking everything out.

Can EASe CDs help adult hearing loss?
The original Berard Auditory Integration Therapy was created by Dr. Berard to address his own hearing loss. However in the years since, AIT and EASe have been used mostly for auditory hypersensitive, neurologically involved children. We have had parents of autistic children who reported their own hypersensitive hearing, also report their hearing improved after listening to their children's EASe CDs.

Adult hearing loss/recruitment or hyperacusis are complex conditions and can be related to a number of different causes, including noise damage, drug damage, surgical response and more.

Will the EASe CDs help my child if he is 9 years old, and would I have to buy all 10 to see a difference?
The earlier a child can start using the EASe CDs, the better, (see Deborah’s testimonial). However, we have seen positive results with sixty five year old surgery patients, so nine years old is certainly not too old.
Many people report positive result with only one EASe CD, however in order to give your child a serious chance for success, we recommend a longer schedule (see above). If your child had to listen to a single EASe CD for more ten hours, it would cease to be effective and the repetition would make your child exceedingly unhappy.

My 7 years old boy (IQ107) is having visual spatial problem (e.g. jumping line in reading, eye ball tracking not good...) It seems that the CDs work with the brain, will it help him in such situation and how?
There has been a history of recommending Berard and Tomatis auditory programs to cure everything from Autism to mental illness. We disagree with this.
The EASe CD is extremely useful in training a child’s brain to achieve normal habituation to AUDITORY stimulation. While improved eye contact, communication, balance, calmness and many other benefits are regularly seen after using the EASe CD, all but balance are byproducts of reducing auditory hypersensitivity. Balance can be improved by direct stimulation of the vestibular cochlea and associated neurological response.

If the CDs are used for a 'normal' kid, no special problem, would listening to the CDs create any adverse effect to him?
The EASe CDs are not designed to sound “good” to a neurologically typical individual, but they are perfectly safe for anyone to listen to.

What is the lead time required for receiving the CD in HK after placing order in the web? Or any customer in HK?
We ship internationally via Global Priority Express. This typically means that EASe orders will arrive at their destination internationally within seven to ten business days. When Global Priority Mail is not available, we ship them via Air Mail, which is only slightly slower.

This weekend, we went to a restaurant and it was VERY loud, a waiter dropped a whole tray and it was so loud, it really scared my daughter. Now, she is terrified to go back there. Another time, we were at a Home Depot and a whole cart of lumber fell and it was extremely loud. Now, my daughter is scared to go back to Home Depot! I really want to get her help for her noise sensitivity.
I think I would be scared to go to that restaurant or Home Depot too!
However, we can help your daughter. For now, I would keep her away from really loud places, or when she is there, allow her to wear protective earphones. Today all the kids are wearing headphones, so no one will even notice, except that hers are bigger and cooler than their little ear buds. Eventually however, we will want to eliminate the protections in favor of normal habituation. That is what using the EASe CDs can help with.

How much music/sound is on each CD?
Each EASe CD contains approximately sixty minutes of processed music.

My child has problems with consonants. She can start words with 'd', 'b' and 'ou', but she can't at all say words beginning with 'c/k' or 'g'. It doesn't seem that she is not hearing these words (although I could be wrong), she looks as though she is trying really hard to say them but she can't. She often will get the number of syllables correct but not the pronunciation.

When a child is unable to perceive consonants reliably:

First, remember that sound is a temporal event. That means that a word has a beginning, a middle after the beginning and an end after the middle.
If you miss any part of perceiving that event, you will not be able to recreate it, because it is instantly gone.

Now imagine that you are hearing sound through window blinds. Longer sounds make it through the cracks between the blinds, and are only partially blocked. However a shorter sound can be blocked entirely by a single blind and not heard at all. The short sounds are consonants and the longer sounds are vowels. This is why Hannah cannot recreate some consonants reliably. She did not hear them in the first place. The reason she did not hear them is because her auditory perception system (auditory cortex) is running slower than it is supposed to. She is constantly playing catch up to sound, perceiving bits and pieces instead of the entire event.

If you miss visual detail in an object, you can just look at it for a longer period. However the temporal event of sound is here and gone and does not give you the opportunity to examine it further. You must either get it in real time, or not get it.

There are a few things that can be done. First her neurological health is of utmost importance. This means that she should get enough oxygen, through regular aerobic activity. She should receive a great diet, with lots of fresh food. She should get enough sleep. For her, the difference between being fresh and tired is the difference between being more able to understand her world and being a lost outsider, unable to understand the things around her.

Her acoustic environment is also important. Reverberant environments tend to slur consonants with early reflections, making it hard to understand language. This is the same situation for everyone, however it is critical for Hannah because she is disposed to not understanding everything she hears. If you have a big home with high ceilings, you might consider putting rugs on the floors and acoustic tiles on the ceilings. Anything you can do to absorb reverberation in her environment will help her understand better. This is the same for her classroom at school. This is a huge problem for many thousands of kids who are labeled ADD, but who just can't hear in a typical classroom.

I would also suggest that in addition to the EASe CDs (I hope you have the whole set for her) that you look into the computer program Fast Forward. If she is able to complete the course, it may be helpful. It is designed just for her problem and may be offered by her school.

What form of payment does Vision Audio accept?
You can pay in our web store with either a credit card or pay pal. We ship in the US by US Priority Mail and internationally via Global Priority Mail. We will only charge you one shipping charge per order, no matter how many EASe CDs you purchase.