The findings shed new light on possible causes of learning disabilities, and suggest there may be new ways to treat them.
Children live in a noisy universe.
Now a growing body of research shows that a child's ability to process all those sounds is directly related to the ability to learn. Conversely, children like 11 year old Molly Durot, who can't process sounds well, often develop learning disabilities. Molly has struggled with reading and writing from the start. After subjecting her to a battery of tests and getting a diagnosis of dyslexia, Molly's mother heard about research at Northwestern University into something called auditory processing disorder. Children here watch movies and play listening games while highly sensitive equipment measures the brain's instantaneous response to speech sounds.