Auditory discrimination refers to the ability to distinguish between different sounds. It involves perceiving differences in pitch, tone, rhythm and other sound characteristics. It's an essential skill for activities like language processing and music appreciation.
Pitch discrimination allows you to differentiate between high and low frequencies of sound. This allows you to perceive nuances in music and speech.
Tone discrimination is important for recognizing different instruments and voices.
Rhythm discrimination helps you identify variations in timing and duration of sounds, such as recognizing patterns in music and speech.
Sound location determines direction from which sound is coming. This relies on the brains processing of subtle differences in sound arrival times and intensities between the ears.
Speech sound discrimination is the ability to recognize between/differentiate different speech sounds that make up words and language.
Auditory pattern recognition is the ability to identify and remember specific patterns of sounds like melodies in music or sequences in spoken language.
Auditory attention is the ability to focus on specific sounds while filtering out background noise which is important for effective communication.
Games to play to improve auditory discrimination:
Sound guessing games: Make or play various sounds e.g., animal noises, musical instruments, everyday noises and guess what they are.
Simon says with sounds: Give auditory not visual cues e.g., Simon says clap your hands, stomp your feet.
Sound sorting: collect objects that make a variety of sounds e.g., keys, bell, crumpled paper. Have the child close their eyes and match the objects to the sounds.
Musical chairs with a twist: Instead of stopping the music, play different sounds. When a sound is played the child needs to find a chair.
Rhyme time: Say 2 or more words. Identify rhyming pairs.
Sounds puzzles: Match pictures to there correct sound.
Sound memory game: Place objects with distinct sounds in a bag. Pick an object and listen to its sound while you are blindfolded. Try identify matching objects by sound alone.