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The auditory system needs to interpret all the sounds of spoken language and attach linguistic meaning to them. For example a dog is able to hear as well or better than humans, however the dogs’ ear isn’t able to separate the speech stream into meaningful words that he can understand. This requires auditory perception and auditory processing; together they provide the foundation for understanding language. Most children with Autism/PDD have significant auditory processing disorders, and this fact alone contributes significantly to their language delays.

Our ability to analyze sound starts to develop in the womb and makes rapid progress during the first two years of life. In the womb the fetus is learning language largely from hearing his mother’s voice. The baby first learns to tune into salient sounds and ignore background noise. During this stage he learns to recognize all the sounds (phonemes) that make up language. With an ear already attuned in listening to language sounds, the baby is ready at birth to make rapid progress in attaching meaning to the sounds he hears.

The ability to analyze sounds accurately and rapidly is crucial to language development. The baby’s ear must recognize the blend of the sounds “ U and P” to mean the action of rising. He must do this rapidly in order to listen to the rest of the sentence, which may ask him to “stand up” or to “pick up the toy”. Children with Autism/PDD have difficulty in multiple areas of auditory processing, including tuning in to the primary message while ignoring background noise, as well as accurately and rapidly analyzing sound. If these processes are not working accurately it is very difficult for children with Autism and PDD to develop language.
 

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