As with the other syndromes linked to developmental disorders, the Electronic Ear helps the autistic child to favour his opening towards the world.
Autism is a developmental disorder that generally becomes evident during the first three years of life. According to the National Autism Observatory, which comes under the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (the Italian National Institute of Health), it is estimated that in Italy autism presents itself in approximately 1 child in 77, and it appears to be progressively increasing. It is, moreover, a disorder of sensory integration and of communication.
For Tomatis, autism is a sort of "multiform generic" for which there exists, surely, a common trunk, but also a thousand and one details that give rise to as many clinical pictures as there are autistic children, and that bring to light as many relational disorganisations in the lives of those involved in it. Tomatis avoids entering into the discussion as to the organic nature or otherwise of this syndrome, just as he does not speak of any genetic factors. He aims at once at the essential, bringing to light the major element of autism, which comes to be in close relation with his work. This element, this essential sign, is the following:
the autistic child does not listen
In a writing of his on autism, of 1986, Tomatis explains his point of view on the syndrome, pointing out that it matters little to know why the autistic child does not listen.
He has good hearing, surely — so at least he shows — but in some way, somewhere, there lurks a refusal to listen. An unwilled refusal, let it be quite clear. The consequences of this, however, are not slow to come. By refusing to listen — that is, to integrate language — the child will live in a universe from which the word will be excluded. […] In this way the autistic person lives intensely and paradoxically in an acoustic-sonic world in which every semantic meaning is eliminated. Although he may hear a fly buzzing, he is not able to perceive his own name when it is pronounced, even standing close to him. Things happen as if there were a cleavage between hearing and perceiving. The passive action, the one that leaves him immersed in sounds, subsists at times even excessively, while the passage towards vigilance, whence consciousness will emerge, is not realised. […] Autistic people are assailed by very many stimulations without any of them entering into a categorial structuring. They hear but do not listen. They look but do not see. They produce sounds but do not speak. Their surrounding world is paradoxical, without conducting threads, without a synthesis in the passages from one event to another. These children reassure themselves in their own manner through stereotypes that fix them upon themselves, giving them at the same time a semblance of behavioural reality.
The world presents itself to them without unity, without development. Their vision is made of a succession of separate snapshots. Sounds manifest themselves as repetitive sequences without any of them managing to have any reference to the word. If even a single word were perceived semantically, the syndrome would disappear. It is not a matter — as, unfortunately, one often sees — of training a child to pronounce words.
Clinical experience with a great number of autistic children led Tomatis to think that what must be stimulated in them is the desire to communicate. And this desire, so deeply rooted in man, fastens onto one of the organs earliest in their development, which is the ear.
The work with the Tomatis method consists in seeking to arouse the desire to communicate through the reawakening of listening. With the sending of sounds specially devised and passed through the Electronic Ear, the child is invited acoustically to retrace the stages of his own psycho-affective development, so as to favour the reweaving of the communicational weft.
Among the reactions observed, those of the neurovegetative life are generally the first to manifest themselves, and in an appreciable manner:
- sleep becomes more tranquil, with an attenuation and often a disappearance of nightmares
- the appetite normalises; the child who ate little begins to eat more, while the one who devoured asks for less food. Moreover, he tends to be less selective about foods.
Other things are modified on the plane of behaviour:
- the child in general becomes more affectionate, first of all with the mother. He seeks contact, loves to sit on her knees, to caress her. He more readily accepts being touched.
- at times, on the contrary, the rejection of the mother may become accentuated, without understanding the causes, and without the child knowing why.
- from time to time the autistic child begins to weep in a desperate manner. This passage is important, and it must be allowed to happen. He does not know why he weeps. These weepings, however, manage to make him surmount a state of pain. He consoles himself by the very fact of weeping.
Autistic people often suffer pain on account of their multiple hypersensitivities. Many of them are hypersensitive to sounds. The intensity of the pain may at times be unbearable. Some indicators of this hypersensitivity are:
- covering the ears with the hands
- outbursts of anger, due to the frustration of having constantly to battle with sounds
- repetition of the same words, phrases or affirmations. Probably a way of calming or stabilising oneself in the face of a mass of sounds perceived as intense or confused.
Tomatis explains this hypersensitivity by the fact that these children are more sensitive to sound through bone and cutaneous conduction than through the tympanic pathway (the air pathway). The sounds gathered by the body, however, reach the brain without being filtered, thus creating a "noise" which, without the tympanic counterpart, becomes irrelevant and comes to increase the background noise that assails the child. Thus, when one works with people with autistic syndrome, hypersensitive to sounds, the first thing one seeks to do is to balance the bone conduction with respect to the tympanic perception. In this way the sounds can be processed more effectively.
Since all our senses are correlated with one another, it often happens that, by reducing the hypersensitivity to sounds, other hypersensitivities are attenuated, such as that shown by tactile defensiveness, by ocular avoidance, and the aversion towards foods with different nuances of flavour.
It thus becomes clear that the reduction of hypersensitivity and the regulation of sensory integration are key stages in helping the autistic child to reconnect with his family and with his environment, leading him progressively to emerge from his protective shell. This improvement of sensory integration will, moreover, allow the child to respond better to other therapies that previously proved ineffective, precisely for want of a possibility of contact through the senses.
Among the scientific research on the efficacy of the Tomatis method in problems of autism, that carried out by Dr Joan Neysmith-Roy of the Department of Psychology of the University of Regina (Canada) is to be noted. It is a double-blind study with six children (boys) diagnosed as profoundly autistic. The study confirmed the clinical evidence that autistic children draw benefit from the Tomatis method. At the end of the treatment, three (50%) of these children showed significant changes in behaviour. Of these, one was no longer considered autistic; the other two passed from a form of profound autism to a milder form of autism. The other three children showed no significant changes. Of particular interest was that five of the six children treated also showed a significant improvement in the behaviours of the pre-linguistic area, such as adaptability to change, the capacity for listening, non-verbal communication and the capacity for emotional response.
Many families of autistic children have noticed that the Tomatis method leads to a better quality of life, thanks to the stimulation of the development of the prerequisites of learning, rendering them more able to benefit from the specialised programmes of socialisation and of education.
Bibliography to learn more about the Tomatis method applied to autism:
• Tomatis A., Considérations sur l'autisme, Paris, Centre Tomatis 1986
• Tomatis A., L'orecchio e la vita. Xenia, Como-Pavia, 2013