Auditory Integration Training: An Alternative Treatment for Autism
To be honest, even at the time I was skeptical: how could playing a series of tones over headphones make any difference in symptoms of autism? I asked my speech language therapist about the therapy, and she reiterated the American Speech Hearing Association (ASHA) perspective on AIT: "After a careful review of available research findings gathered after years of experience with AIT, the Working Group on Auditory Integration Training did not find sufficient evidence that AIT improves the behavior of individuals who undergo this procedure." I let it go.
But AIT has not disappeared - in fact, there is continuing interest in the therapy. And even ASHA is now recommending further study (though they are still skeptical of its usefulness). This new article, Auditory Integration Training for Autism, explains the treatment in more detail, outlines the American Pediatric Association's perspective, and offers resources for more information (including a link to safety and efficacy guidelines from Dr. Berard, the developer of AIT).
Have you used AIT in any of its many forms? Did you find it helpful? Hurtful? Irrelevant? Was it very expensive? How did you track any improvements from the treatment? Share your experiences with Auditory Integration Training!
Comments
Lisa:
We offer AIT at the Autism Center of Pittsburgh. While my own son isn’t starting until January 08, our patients have given RAVE REVIEWS of AIT. They’ve seen incredible strides from improvement on potty training, language, the ability to attend to task, behaviors…it’s truly amazing.
I must admit when our OT’s told me about it I thought it was another “voodoo” science, but from the reports of the dozens of parents at our Center who have tried it, it’s truly amazing.
I put the headphones on myself. It’s hard to explain, but these headphones will pick out certain sounds in the music, vacillating from one ear to the other. You hear the music in the background, but these particular tones and sounds that are brought to your attention by the way they are amplified, thus forcing the listener to “actively” listen.
Unfortunately, the headphones are expensive. One company has a patent on them, manufactured by Sennheiser, a German company, and you can’t find them anywhere else. They run about $150, but from what I’ve seen, they’re worth it.
Cindy
My wife and I tried this with our son. It cost us $500. We have friends that have tried this and we actually saw a difference in their child. So, we tried it as well. It did not have any noticable difference. We gave it a year before we allowed our son to use ear phones again. We also had to drive about 50 miles everyday for 10 days to have the therapy performed. It was worth the effort to try because we have seen it work for other children but in our case, it didn’t work.
That was the first set of therapies my son received when he was diagnosed nine and a half years ago. At the time we still had money available. It was helpful, he started to attend better to auditory stimulus (he was holding his ear against a vacuum cleaner running but covering his ears with someone speaking in a room).
I never had a chance to do follow-up sessions. It was very costly and disruptive in daily life (needed to go for extensive periods of time to the city that is 2 hours away).
My daughter, who is now 14, had AIT in 1998. She has HFA and had always been verbal. However, before AIT she exhibited symptoms of severe auditory hypersensitivity and articulation difficulties. Although AIT was not a “miracle”, she has since been able to tolerate high volume and high frequency auditory input. She also improved tremendously almost immediately on her sentence structure and repetitive speech. The science behind AIT is a little precarious, but I feel that the benefits are definitely worth further investigation.
I first did AIT about 6 years ago on my kids and found it to be tremendously helpful. I continued doing it every year because I kept seeing positive results. We did Berard AIT by a certified Berard practitioner. I think it is very important to go to a qualified person. I hear other people saying they did not see results. However, they did not do Berard AIT or did it with someone not trained and not following Dr. Berard’s protocol.
After doing it for so many years, I decide to get certified myself and offer Berard AIT to others in my area. I really believe this could really make a difference in peoples lives.
Have you read The Sound of A Miracle, by Annabel Stehle? She brought auditory training into the limelight, almost 20 years ago. Her experience with Dr. Berard in Switzerland prompted the book and the machine was then available in Montreal with Dr. Binet.
We took our son to Dr.Binet in Montreal. Last June, I described our experience in a blog. http://www.revolutionhealth.com/blogs/resilientmom/beware-of-snake-oil-5210
Whether our son’s language improved due to the auditory training, or behavior modification regarding denial of solid food to rule out a parasite, he cried for SPAGHETTI, a word never uttered prior to auditory training.
It is a benign intervention.
Go for it.
xR
I offer AIT as a treatment for autism through my non-profit organization called Audiohope Organization. If you have any doubts about the validity of this treatment, please visit my website www.audiohope.org and read about Sydney and see the short DVD of Evan whose miraculous improvement can be seen in a before and after AIT format. One of the greatest desires of parents with autistic children is to see those children become fully potty trained. A few months after AIT, Evan became fully potty trained.
I just visited the “poster child” for autism who is the reason I began an AIT practice. Nick was the most severely autistic child I had ever seen and the doctors told his mother that she should institutionalize him because he would never improve. In fact the mother was told that after puberty Nick would become worse. As soon as I can have video footage edited that was shot this past weekend, you will see a young man, now 20, singing 2 of his original songs accompanied by his guitar.
He is now in junior college and designing websites.
The best part of AIT is that results can be seen up to a year after treatment. Those parents who didn’t see improvement probably had the wrong practitioner. Be sure that you go to a Berard certified practitioner.
Also I believe that autistic children must be put on a strict diet and be given a mega dose of the proper vitamins. There is no cookie cutter answer to autism. I only know that all of my clients have made remarkable improvements and family friends always ask what the parents have done to cause such noticeable changes in these children.
If you suspect that the treatment is not “main stream” I encourage you to visit The AIT Institute at www.AITinstitute.org and find the practitioners nearest you. This website is loaded with lots of pertinent information about autism and lists many, many success stories across the US and the world.
If I had an autistic child, I would be grateful for someone to inform me about AIT.