Are You Listening? Can You Hear It?

"What kind of bird is in Nemo?"       "A pelican."
"What kind of bird is that in Finding Nemo?"       "A pelican."
"What is that kind of bird again?"      "You know what kind of bird it is. What kind is it?"   "A pelican, mommy."
"What kind of bird is in Nemo?"      "I'm not answering you again."
"What is it? Is it a pelican? Pelican. Pelican. Pelican."

Picture that conversation happening over and over and over again.  I mean, without stopping. No breaks for 15 minutes or so. This is has happened constantly in the past 2 days. It was insane. He knew the answer, yet he kept asking.

This morning Ray asked, "What's going on with that? What do you think about it?" I had no clue. I figured it had to do with him not being in school and not having the certainty of a routine he craves. He gets insecure really quickly when he doesn't have a routine. He obviously can hear us tell him that it's a pelican, but he asks over and over again. I decided to do some research and see if this had something to do with his APD or if this was something else. I came across this article at Incredible Horizons. Here is a short excerpt from the website regarding the attention and memory aspects of Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD):

Attention is another immensely important aspect of CAPD.  Sound is an incredibly brief signal.  If I say, "hello," the word is immediately gone once I have said it.  If a child is not 'listening' when someone says hello the child does not 'hear' it.  On the contrary, look back two lines and read the word 'hello'.  You can do it because, unless erased, written images persist.  Tactile images persist.  We even enjoy, after dinner, lingering tastes of what we ate for dinner.  We can also recognize when someone has been smoking in a room we have entered because of the persistent smoke odor.  Sound, however, is gone as quickly as it occurs.  Hence, if a child is not 'attending' to a particular speaker at a specific moment he/she will most likely 'miss' part of what the speaker has said.  The result will be gaps and inconsistencies in the child's perception of what was said.  To really understand the impact of attention on audition one must understand that, like memory, there are multiple aspects (or types) of attention. 

Briefly, attention encompasses a variety of functions.  

1. There is initial 'focus' or 'recognition' attention.  It scans the environment and recognizes every possible auditory image.  
2. If a particular stimulus is more important or attractive to the listener 'selective attention' is brought into play. This is 'sustaining' attention or 'maintenance'.  This aspect of attention retains possession of the mind and keeps the subject's orientation toward the interesting stimulus.  
3. Another attention is that of 'vigilance'.  If a child is listening for the teacher to announce homework, amidst everything else the teacher is discussing the child is 'keying' on the word homework.  As the stream of spoken speech races  by, the child must be able to quickly recognize and attend to that portion which he/she has  been vigilant toward (or listening for).  Weak auditory vigilance causes a child to be less involved with the world because he/she is unable to grab that which has been deemed important out of the ongoing speech. 
4. Attention 'switching' is yet another form of attention.  It is the ability to divert one's attention from one item to another and then effectively jump back to that same point that was left. 

Some children do well attending to one stimulus or task, but have trouble switching back and forth from one task to another.  When they attempt this switching they become lost and have trouble picking up at the appropriate spot each time.  Another child may have difficulty with 'spare' attention.  This relates to load and capacity.  The child may perform well at one level of attention, but as task demands increase the child does not have enough attention 'reserve' (spare attention) to pull from in order to continue with effective maintenance.

Now, since I'm not an expert, this may have absolutely nothing to do with all this weekend's pelican talk, but this does explain Jared in some ways. I can't wait to dive into more of that particular website to learn more!

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! Romans 11:33 (NLT)