Listening requires the desire to focus on sounds. Tomatis identifies this lack of desire as a major cause of learning disabilities. Poor listening makes poor learning. To listen well, the ear must be able to analyze the sounds correctly. In nature, pure sounds do not exist.
Natural sounds are a mixture of high and low pitch frequencies.
The ear must be able to distinguish between them. Learning disabled people are often unable to do so. They do not hear the difference between sounds like s and z, p and b, t and d, etc. For Tomatis, reading and writing requires that we associate a graphic sign with a sound in a single time frame. This is obviously a difficult task when the sounds are not clearly discriminated.