[Music]
[Applause]
13 steps
and a click
these were the sounds i listened for
because it meant my dad was walking down
the stairs to unlock the basement door
with my next meal
always the same
two peanut butter sandwiches for lunch
two american processed cheese sandwiches
for dinner
always left wordlessly on a chair
outside my room
i wasn't talked to or touched from the
ages of 13 to 17
the years i was locked in the basement
there was no running water downstairs
so buckets were my bath
and my toilet
during long periods in the basement like
the three months during summer break
or
christmas
it was so
so lonely
i used to stare up at the wooden beams
and try to pick images out of them
because there was no sound
no sunshine
only nothing
i used to go to school during the day
time to keep up appearances that things
were fine
because my dad and stepmom were primary
school teachers
i also thought it was reasonable and i
believed them when they told me they
were doing it for my own good
to make me focus
i was frightened and ashamed and told no
one how i lived
my stepmother told me that children like
me should be seen and not heard
and also that i wasn't intelligent
enough to go to university
fortunately for me a group of brave
girls
and strong women from my high school
realized something wasn't quite right
and they found a way of reaching down
and pulling me up
out of my basement prison
my life transitioned from darkness to
sunshine in the blink of an eye
my foster mom restored me
by saying
you are so
good
hundreds of times each day
i'd do the smallest thing and she'd
notice like close the door softly
she'd say look at what you just did you
just closed that door so nicely you are
so
good how lucky am i to have you
my mother didn't know that i wasn't
living a life of privilege and i had
been pressured to tell her that i wanted
nothing to do with her
my stepmom and dad didn't want me
but they didn't want her to have me
either
so in the six months that i was with my
foster mom she reconnected me with my
mother who immediately showered me with
all of the love she had been holding in
all those years without me
and now i stand before you
where you can see and hear me
as a doctor of audiology
[Applause]
whoa
it's hard to hear a story like that
without being able to ask a few
questions eh
it's intense
but i told you my story because i know
what it feels like to be set aside
to be dismissed
to be
imprisoned
but i also know how it feels to be set
free
school wasn't easy for me but learning
brought me joy
when i was in grad school i had to
record my lectures and re-listen to them
three times just to understand and
remember what i had learned
and then one day
my life snapped into focus
when jack katz phd gave a lecture at the
university of kansas on auditory
processing disorder
there was this unmistakable feeling that
i was learning about something i had
always known
i felt like i was falling in love
it was on that day that i decided the
work i would do the rest of my life and
the wonderful jack katz became my mentor
this is what he taught me
auditory processing is what the brain
does with what the ears hear
when there's an error with auditory
skills it's called an auditory
processing disorder
therefore apd is a hearing disorder that
has less to do with the ears and more to
do with the brain
there are a hundred of us in this room
and that means that if we represent a
general population
at least six of you
know this disorder because you have
lived it
but rates are even higher in the most
marginalized and vulnerable people
for example research at the university
of auckland suggests that up to 35
percent of pacific island children have
this difficulty
partially due to the high rates of
middle ear disorders during early
childhood
if a child is learning speech and
language through fluid in the middle ear
space the brain receives a distorted
version of speech sounds
rates are also higher in other
populations and it co-occurs with
dyslexia
adhd
autism
brain injury and emerging data suggests
that there's high rates in the prison
population
if you have ever traveled to another
country where they speak a different
language you may know how this feels
when the plane lands you may be aware
that people are speaking to you but
until you can process what they say it
can be frustrating it can be confusing
it can be isolating
now imagine having that same feeling in
your own language
when you struggle to hear and understand
you struggle to feel heard and
understood now let me take you on a
journey to understand how auditory
skills are supposed to be
now picture this like a staircase
and listen to the this sample
sound the first step is awareness are
you aware i just said something
if you aren't you may have hearing loss
and we overcome issues of awareness with
hearing aids or cochlear implants
the second level is called
discrimination not only can you hear
those two sounds you know that
and d are different from each other
the next level is called identification
you can hear the difference and you know
that
is b and d is d
we need all of these levels to get to
the final level our goal which is
comprehension
understanding what you hear
people with auditory processing disorder
can have difficulties anywhere along
this
continuum
and sometimes people struggle even at
that discrimination level which can be
so fundamental that it looks like a
problem of awareness
so adults with auditory processing
disorder often think they have hearing
loss and need hearing aids so they go to
an audiologist for a hearing test
now a standard hearing test is where you
hear a beep and you push a button or you
raise your hand
that is a test of awareness it doesn't
tell us anything about how the brain
processes speech
that is far more complex
will this exact situation happened to my
client jackie
she had had two hearing tests and they
were both normal audiologists told her
she was fine but that did not match her
experience
and i have made the conscious decision
to believe every client who tells me
they are struggling
remember jackie has no hearing loss
but this is her on the day i met her
does a hearing problem cause you to feel
embarrassed when you meet new people yes
does the hearing problem cause you to
feel frustrated when talking to members
of your family yes
do you have difficulty hearing or
understanding co-workers clients
customers or great staff
yes
definitely
does a hearing problem cause you
difficulty when visiting friends
relatives or neighbors yes
jackie's complaints were consistent with
auditory processing disorder she said
what a lot of clients say she had to
have people repeat themselves constantly
she struggled to hear in background
noise she was always getting music
lyrics wrong and she had to use
subtitles while watching tv to
understand the plot
even in her own language
she also said that hearing was difficult
for her even as a child but her parents
told her she needed to pay more
attention and when she got things wrong
her family called her dumb
and at school she struggled to learn to
read and spell
so we did an auditory processing
evaluation on jackie and here are her
results
green is good red means that 99.9 of the
population would have outperformed her
on those tasks and had better auditory
skills than she did now remember normal
hearing test but poor
auditory processing test results jackie
has a lot of red she has apd
auditory processing disorder
but this is a hopeful diagnosis because
we can do something about it and that is
called auditory training think about it
like circuit training but where you're
learning auditory skills to see a
resulting improvement in potential and
well-being
i think it might be kind of hard to
picture that so let's do an exercise
together shall we all right so what's
going to happen is i'm going to say a
word or actually you're going to hear a
word and i want you to repeat it back
i'm gonna do the first one with you and
then you're on your own
let's let it rip
eight
eight
your turn
chin
[Music]
chase
a crash
[Music]
[Music]
feet
[Music]
[Music]
okay i heard some nervous laughter um
this is not this is therapy not a test
so if you got some of those wrong do not
diagnose yourselves okay
only a specialized audiologist can
diagnose apd
so this was just a short sample of one
of the many tools that we have in our
arsenal to help improve auditory skills
this one's goal is to increase your
tolerance of background noise and then
slowly improve your accuracy as well
jackie had 12 sessions of auditory
training once a week for 12 weeks and
then here are her pre and post test
results
that was exciting
however it is more important for me to
find out did this change her life did it
improve things for her so more
importantly we listen to her
does a hearing problem cause you
difficulty when listening to tv or radio
no does it cause you to go shopping less
often than you would like no no it's not
getting in the way of that
does a problem or difficulty with your
hearing upset you at all
no not now
does a hearing problem cause you to talk
to family members less often than you
would like no
do you feel that any difficulty with
your hearing limits or hampers your
personal or social life
no
i couldn't believe the transformed woman
in front of me she was comfortable she
was confident she was relaxed and she
said this actually had changed her
relationship with her own father
he said that people had been hard on him
and that's why he was hard on her
and it is very difficult to be a parent
or a teacher of a child with an auditory
processing disorder because
not listening is such a trigger for
adults how often have you heard an adult
call a child a selective listener or say
that their spouse has domestic deafness
okay i kind of like that last one
but all dad jokes aside
what if that person has a neurological
condition that needs treatment
remember how i told you i had i had to
re-listen to lectures over and over
again
after a year of sitting next to jack
katz watching him do auditory training i
attended a lecture and i didn't have my
recording device
and i panicked
i thought that the next three hours were
going to be a total waste of time
but then at the end of the lecture i
looked down and i had coherent notes
i could remember what my professor said
and the first time in however long i
could remember i didn't feel tired from
listening
i had not realized that auditory
processing disorder had affected my own
life
until it was
resolved
but i'm not alone a majority of people
most affected by auditory processing
disorder don't even know it exists
and most professionals who know it
exists don't realize it can be treated
beyond devices
but i'm working to change that
i'm training and empowering audiologists
and speech language pathologists how to
do this work to identify and treat
auditory processing
through auditory processing institute
we have tools that we can measure
auditory skills in children as young as
three and a half
and there is also a new protocol called
the frequency following response
it uses sound and it measures brain
waves to test auditory processing
the amazing thing about this is it has
the potential to identify children at
risk of language and learning problems
at birth
that's a toddler but i mean at birth
early intervention is key
the first three months are the most
important and the first three years are
the next most important and as i am a
mother now i want my kid to have the
best life as soon as possible
people with hearing loss can also have
auditory processing disorder or auditory
processing issues even
just because they fix their issue of
awareness
doesn't necessarily mean that they're
going to automatically get up to
comprehension with good hearing aids or
a cochlear implant they can also benefit
from auditory training
there are heaps
of different treatment types available
in person online even apps
but what works for some
doesn't necessarily work for others
but remember
jackie the treatment she received
matched the problems she had and that is
why
her
results were so life-changing
and i have an idea on how we can do that
for more people we can use machine
learning
to help plan and predict treatment for
every individual
based on previous client data
it's an exciting time to be alive
and my hope is that anyone who realizes
they're struggling with auditory
processing issues will seek treatment
and will be empowered enough to do that
there are just four steps to come out
of this basement
it may take a bit of courage and
persistence
but i can tell you right now it is worth
it for a life in the sun
and you should do it
because you
are so
good
[Applause]
[Music]
you