ABSTRACT
WHAT IS AUDITORY INTEGRATION TRAINING? Auditory integration training (AIT) is a procedure in which acoustically modified music is played to a person for 10 hours. Two 30-minute sessions per day, several hours apart, are conducted for 10 days in a fortnight. Commercial popular music with wide frequency range is used. Output from a compact disk player is connected to a box (AIT device, i.e., Audiokinetron, Audio Tone Enhancer/Trainer, or Ears Education and Retraining System) containing electronic circuitry that can modify the signal in two ways, modulation and narrow-band filtering. Modulation entails random clipping of frequencies above or below 1000 Hz for random durations between .25s and 2.0s. Filtering is reduction of volume for frequencies at which the individual recipient has hyperacute (unusually sharp) hearing as determined from prior audiological testing. The client wears headphones connected to the output from the AIT device. There are alterations made during the course of treatment in some dimensions of the musical stimuli, for example, changing volume levels for individual ears and in narrow-band filtering (Berkell, Malgeri, & Streit, 1996). These variables in AIT procedure have not been studied and are not mentioned further in this chapter.
