Considerations on the listening test

Text attributed to A. A. Tomatis, published by the Society of Audio-Psycho-Phonology (Amiens) in June 1974. It gathers remarks collected from Professor Tomatis during the 3rd International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology (Antwerp, 1973), in the form of a paper followed by a series of questions and answers. The document refers to his books “ Éducation et Dyslexie ” and “ L’Oreille et le Langage ”.

This document presents the listening test as the central examination of the audio-psycho-phonological assessment. Tomatis first distinguishes the four parameters collected: the determination of thresholds in air and bone conduction, the study of the spatialization of sounds, the study of selectivity (the faculty of perceiving and locating a variation in frequency), and the measurement of laterality by means of the audio-laterometer. He insists above all on the difference between hearing and listening: the audiogram measures an audition, whereas the listening test reveals the subject’s desire and capacity to use his ear in order to communicate. He describes an “ideal curve” rising in the mid-range, sets out the symbolic meaning attributed to each ear (right/father, left/mother) and to the frequency zones (body, language, spirituality), and then details the interpretation of the air curve (listening to the other) and the bone curve (self-listening). The interview finally addresses deafness of organic origin (transmission, perception, mixed) and of psychological origin, as well as the posture of listening and re-education under the Electronic Ear.

Historical context — The listening test is the fundamental diagnostic tool of the audio-psycho-phonology developed by Alfred Tomatis (1920-2001), an ENT physician. Designed to evaluate not pure hearing but the subject’s “posture of listening,” it guides the re-education through sound filtering and through the Electronic Ear. This 1974 text testifies to the clinical dimension but also to the psycho-symbolic interpretations proper to the method, which remain foreign to standard medical audiology.