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INTRODUCTION
Over the last 40 years, Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, a French physician and specialist in Otolaryngology, has been developing a method of auditory stimulation which assists and accelerates the development of listening skills, language and communication.
The Method which bears Tomatis' name has been successfully applied in North America by special education teachers, psychologists and speech and language pathologists who have been trained and certified in the application of the Tomatis Method and continue to work in association with Dr. Tomatis. There are over 80 facilities worldwide, the majority in Europe, directed by certified specialists from the fields of music, education, psychology, medicine, speech and language therapy and occupational and motor therapy.
In North America, the Method's growth has been spurred on by the activities of organizations and individuals-both parents and professionals-committed to seeing it made more widely available. There are currently nine professionally directed (private and non profit) clinics or centres operating in Canada (3), the United States (3) and Mexico (3). A special group version of the Tomatis Method, the Listening Training Program, has been applied in five Canadian school boards and two private schools to help children with listening-related learning and communication disorders.
Tomatis coined the term "audio-psycho-phonology" (A.P.P.) to describe his innovative and multi disciplinary approach. He has developed a comprehensive theory to explain the results obtained with his method.
THE METHOD AND ITS EFFECTS
The Method itself is a sensory stimulation program in which the individual listens to electronically modified (filtered) sound through headsets. The content is either music, the mother's voice, or the individual's own voice. The sound is modified by a device called the Electronic Ear. By means of filters, amplifiers and a sophisticated gating mechanism the sound is reshaped and presented to the ear in rapidly alternating forms. This auditory stimulation has a number of well documented effects (see Gilmor, 1989; van Jaarsveld & du Plessis, 1989, in press; and Stutt, 1983 for reviews of the literature).
1. There is improvement in receptive (attention span, aural comprehension) and expressive (speech, voice and language) communication skills. This is accomplished according to Tomatis through the modified sound's effect on the middle ear's focussing response which is mediated largely by the action of the stirrup and hammer muscles.
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