Sound Therapy

Sound Therapy

How can Sound Therapy help?

Many children with speech and/or language difficulties, including difficulties with reading and writing, have inefficient Auditory Processing (listening). Researchers believe that Auditory Processing Difficulties may contribute to problems with language processing and the way in which children perceive (or hear) sounds in words.

“JIAS is a gentle & individualised sound therapy, you receive personalised audio determined by your needs and listening graphs to demonstrate progress throughout the program.”

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Sound Therapy Mount Hawthorn

What is Sound Therapy?

Johansen Individual Auditory Stimulation (JIAS) is a Sound Therapy program that involves listening to music specifically designed to stimulate the nerve pathways into and within the brain – in particular the areas dealing with language. It retrains the brain to listen more efficiently. Children as young as four years old, adolescents and adults can all benefit from JIAS.

Johansen Individualised Auditory Stimulation (also known as Johansen Sound Therapy) was developed in Denmark by Dr. Kjeld Johansen, director of the Baltic Dyslexic Research Laboratory, from the original work by Christian A. Volf.

What learning difficulties can benefit from sound therapy?

Speech Sounds (pronouncing speech sound correctly), Receptive Language (understanding of language), Expressive Language (speaking), Auditory Processing/ listening, Written Language (dyslexia), Reading, Spelling, Phonological awareness (awareness of speech sounds), children with/had grommets, Dyspraxia, Autism Spectrum Disorders, stroke, Down’s Syndrome, Understanding and remembering information and instructions, Attention/ Concentration, Self-confidence and self-esteem, anxiety, communication and social skills, Behaviour – when due to poor, communication skills, Hypersensitivity to loud or particular sounds/noises, ADD/ADHD

Who can benefit from Sound Therapy?

JIAS can be of benefit to children, adolescents and adults with a variety of speech and/or language difficulties, both spoken and written (including specific learning difficulties and dyslexia). 

When the sub-skills for listening and learning are strengthened through listening to Johansen IAS audios, language processing abilities can be seen to improve. Concentration, listening, and understanding of language are enhanced as incoming information is dealt with more quickly and efficiently. Gains in reading and spelling are often also seen, as is the ability to analyse the sound structure of words. Making decoding much easier.

Do you think Sound Therapy could help?

Johansen Individual Auditory Stimulation JIAS

Kjeld Johansen qualified as a Teacher in 1963 and taught maths, science, and special education before becoming the vice-principal of his school on the island of Bornholm, Denmark. He also has an MSc in Psychology and a PhD in Education.

Having met and worked with Dr. Christian Volf, a Danish American who had developed his own auditory stimulation program he believed, like Volf, that the right and left ears functioned in different ways. JIAS has been developed to make use of audiometric information gained during assessment and to target specific areas of difficulty according to that information in order to increase the effectiveness of auditory stimulation.

Together with Bent-Peder Holbech, a musician working on Bornholm, he produced and developed the JIAS music. The music is synthesised and draws on influences from medical, educational and musical theory from around the world. It is pleasant to listen to and can be used without additional customisation for young children or those who cannot fully cooperate with the audiometric assessment. When customised, it allows for maximum flexibility to organise the listener’s auditory processing.

Kjeld Johansen has worked with Mediacenter AB in Sweden to develop the Sensograph technology for customising JIAS music.

Dr. Kjeld Johansen ran his first UK training course in 1994. Since 2002, JIAS National Directors have been appointed in eighteen countries (In addition to the UK and Ireland). I am one of many qualified JIAS Providers currently working in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Luxemburg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA.