Founding scientific articles

Articles transcribed and summarised from the facsimiles preserved in the archives (Proteac collection, NAS). The summaries are edited presentations, not reproductions of the original text; the full facsimile is available for each article. Arranged by date of publication.

This page brings together Alfred Tomatis’s founding scientific articles: the publications through which, from his first observations on occupational deafness (1952) to the great syntheses of the 1970s, he set out and disseminated the principles of what would become audio-psycho-phonology. For each one: metadata, summary, historical context and facsimile.

The Tomatis effect (1952)

Author: presented by Louis Longchambon (work of Dr Alfred Tomatis) Date: 1952 Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

It was in the practice of occupational medicine that Tomatis discovered the links uniting hearing and phonation. Examining workers afflicted with occupational deafness, he noticed that the frequencies they heard poorly were precisely those lacking in their voices: the voice contains only what the ear hears. He then established that restoring correct hearing immediately re-establishes vocal emission, and further that any change imposed on the ear is reflected in the voice, as shown by the experiment in which an English subject takes on an American accent. A forced, alternating mode of hearing durably modifies both hearing and phonation. Tomatis applies these laws to the child with learning difficulties, to the spoken and sung voice, and to stammering, which he attributes to a delay in transmission between the hemispheres bound up with an ill-adapted leading ear.

Historical context — As early as 1952, this text presents the first public formulation of the “Tomatis laws” founding audio-phonology. It marks the transition from clinical observations in occupational medicine to a general theory of communication, at the dawn of the young ear, nose and throat specialist’s career.

The musical ear (1953)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: February 1953 Publication: Journal Français d’Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie, n° 2 Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Setting out from the audiometric examinations he carried out on hundreds of workers and engineers in the aeronautical industries, Tomatis makes an unexpected observation: despite a din that could reach 140 decibels, many ears remain intact. Among these subjects “invulnerable to noise”, some fifty present a singular audiometric curve — not the usual trough of occupational deafness, but a heightened, ascending sensitivity between 500 and 2,000 hertz, in the right ear. Now he finds exactly this profile in singers who consult him for problems of accuracy of pitch. By raising their hearing in this zone, he restores to them a voice in tune. Above all, he discovers that all the subjects endowed with this curve are musicians, or possess “the musical ear”: they hear and reproduce a phrase accurately. The article thus establishes the link between the quality of listening and that of the voice.

Historical context — Published the very year in which Tomatis presented his first work, this article extends his 1952 communication on occupational deafness. It lays the cornerstone of his whole body of work: it is the ear that governs the voice, an intuition he would sum up in the formula “one sings with one’s ear”. The observation, at the end of the article, that listening with the left ear alone makes the voice “flat and without musicality” already heralds the leading role of the right ear.

Deafness at the D.E.F.A. (1954)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: May 1954 Publication: Le Médecin d’usine (Congress of the Direction des Études et Fabrications d’Armement, May 1954) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

A report presented to the annual congress of armament physicians, in which Tomatis sets out his observations on occupational deafness. Beyond boilermakers, whose hearing loss classically begins at 4,000 cycles, two populations hold his attention: wind-tunnel workers and gunners. In them, pressure variations first destroy the transmission apparatus of the middle ear, leaving the nerve without any protection. These subjects paradoxically become hyper-aural while losing their selectivity: they hear more but no longer understand, unable to distinguish two sounds of different pitches. The collapse of the nerve then occurs very quickly, sometimes within a year. Tomatis also notes, in some cases, a more marked impairment of the right ear accompanied by voice disorders, and stresses the human and social gravity of these early forms of deafness.

Historical context — Presented two years after the formulation of the “Tomatis laws”, this report anchors his research in the occupational medicine of the 1950s, where industrial and military noise provided his first fields of study. The joint observation of hearing impairment and vocal alteration here gives concrete extension to his audio-phonatory hypothesis.

The correction of the sung voice

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Publication: Société Française d’Étude et de Contrôle du Matériel Audio-Sonore (S.F.E.C.M.A.S.) — Research Laboratory Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis first situates the phoniatrist as a full-fledged ear, nose and throat specialist, and not as a kind of medical singing teacher. Addressing the destroyed sung voice, he distinguishes two origins in the young singer: the rupture of muscular balance born of ill-directed teaching, and a syndrome of incompatibility between master and pupil, founded on the necessity of hearing of equal quality. As for great voices that have been lost, he demonstrates, through oscillographic analysis and the study of the leading ear, that a singer reproduces only what he hears: the vocal curve follows the audiogram. The considerable intensity of great voices induces a deafness of the occupational type, which tips emission towards the low registers and throaty sounds. In support, he analyses the spectral evolution of Caruso’s voice, then re-educates a singer by filtering out the traumatic harmonics so as to restore accuracy and timbre.

Historical context — Arising from his work at the S.F.E.C.M.A.S. laboratory in the mid-1950s, this presentation applies the audio-phonatory laws to the artistic domain of operatic singing. Here one sees the birth of the re-education technique by filtering that would prefigure the “electronic ear”.

Cahiers d’acoustique — Relations between hearing and phonation (1956)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: July-August 1956 Publication: Annales des Télécommunications, volume 11, n° 7-8 (Cahiers d’acoustique n° 74, Groupement des Acousticiens de Langue Française — G.A.L.F.) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis presents his objective audiometry and the interdependent circuit that unites hearing and phonation, in which any anomaly is revealed by a disorder of rhythm or timbre. He describes the leading ear, whose suppression slows and alters emission, and the typical curve of the musical ear, ascending from 500 to 2,000 c/s. Stammering would be explained by a “transcerebral transfer”: deprived of his leading ear, the subject takes a longer path, whose delay — close to a fifteenth of a second, the average duration of the French syllable — produces syllabic redoubling. He then analyses the occupational deafness of singers, who destroy their own hearing through their own intensity, leading to auditory and then vocal scotomata. He finally addresses auditory selectivity, peculiar to each register and varying from one people to another, before setting out his device for objective audiometry by filters and white noise.

Historical context — Published in a journal of acousticians in 1956, this article testifies to the inscription of Tomatis’s research within the post-war scientific community of acoustics. It systematises his laws in the form of a “hearing-phonation circuit” and lays the theoretical foundations of the method that would bear his name.

Objective audiometry (1957)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: May-June 1957 Publication: Journal Français d’Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie (J.F.O.R.L., t. VI, n° 3) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Here Tomatis sets out the relations that make hearing and phonation so interdependent as to form a veritable circuit. He describes the existence of a “leading ear”, the counterpart of the leading eye, and shows by means of electronic set-ups that suppressing this ear immediately disturbs the rhythm and timbre of the voice. He links to this mechanism the pathogenesis of stammering, which he explains by a delay in “transcerebral transfer” approaching a fifteenth of a second, the average duration of the French syllable. He then addresses the occupational deafness of singers, victims of their own sound intensity, the notion of auditory and vocal scotomata, and auditory selectivity varying according to voices and languages. He concludes on the principle of an objective audiometry, measuring hearing without the subject’s knowledge through phonation-hearing feedback.

Historical context — This 1957 article constitutes one of the founding presentations in which Tomatis formulates the law that would bear his name: the voice contains only the harmonics that the ear hears. Here one already finds the leading ear, the hearing-phonation circuit and the idea of the electronic ear, which would structure all his subsequent work.

The nuisances of noise (1957)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: November 1957 Publication: Le Médecin d’usine Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Intended for occupational physicians, this article deals with the dangers of noise in the industrial environment. Tomatis describes occupational deafness, characterised by a narrowing of the auditory field, the loss of high frequencies and the clinical trait of “hearing without understanding”. He details its four stages, from the onset of a permanent deficit around 4,000 hertz to manifest deafness. He argues for early audiometric monitoring of young subjects and presents two devices of his own invention: the factory audiometer, which allows rapid screening based on the change in timbre of a sound, and objective audiometry, intended to unmask malingerers thanks to phonation-hearing feedback. Here he takes up again the leading ear, transcerebral transfer and stammering, then the acoustic self-trauma of singers.

Historical context — Arising from his medical surveillance activity in the Arsenals, under the aegis of the Institut national d’hygiène et de sécurité, this text shows Tomatis applying his audio-phonatory discoveries to the concrete concerns of occupational medicine. Here one sees the transition from the laboratory to clinical instrumentation in the field.

Somatic and psychic reactions to industrial noise (1959)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 1959 Publication: Archives des Maladies Professionnelles (t. 20, n° 5, pp. 611-624) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Here Tomatis argues that industrial noise, through the hypertrophy of its parameters, exceeds the capacities of the ear and disturbs the whole organism. He distinguishes the reactions of the ear, the somatic and psychic reactions secondary to the auditory impairment, and those that appear independent of it. He describes an audiometric “warning sign”, the thinning of the Air-Bone gap, indicating the exhaustion of the osteo-muscular apparatus of the middle ear. From this flows his master idea: a genuine education of the ear to noise, a gymnastics strengthening the stapedius muscle and relaxing the eardrum, carried out by means of the “electronic ear”. He finally associates with the deficit of high frequencies a whole somatic and psychic train of effects — fatigue, weight loss, alteration of the voice, withdrawal, loss of vital impetus.

Historical context — Published in 1959, this text marks a turning point towards the psychic and existential dimension of listening. The highlighting of the somatic and affective repercussions of deprivation of high frequencies, and the therapeutic use of the electronic ear, herald Tomatis’s shift from ear, nose and throat medicine towards audio-psycho-phonology.

Resonance in musical scales (1960)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 1960 Publication: Le point de vue des physiologistes Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis questions the very notion of resonance and distinguishes three inseparable stages of the phenomenon: physical, physiological and psychological. On the physical plane, resonance exploits the vibrations of matter under conditions of minimal impedance. But music has true resonance only if it is heard: its quality then depends on perception, hence on the physiological resonance peculiar to each listener. The ear is not a mere analyser: through a reflex play of regulation, its middle stage can reinforce or extinguish a given harmonic cluster, making low sounds heard as bright or high sounds as dark. Experimentally, the author claims to be able to modify this manner of hearing, even to the point of suppressing musical hearing or conferring the reflexes of a chosen singer. Musical resonance, starting from a known physical fact, thus proves dependent on an essentially individual interpretation.

Historical context — This article situates musical resonance at the crossroads of physics and psycho-physiology, extending Tomatis’s research on the musical ear. It heralds the later developments on auditory conditioning and the electronic ear.

The Tomatis effect and the electronic ear for the acquisition of modern languages (1960)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 11 March 1960 Publication: Lecture given at the UNESCO Palace Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis presents language as the ultimate stage of an adaptation that has conditioned, for acoustic ends, a neuro-muscular complex first devoted to swallowing and breathing. Here he describes the audio-vocal loop: to speak is to hear and control oneself, the first to be informed being the emitter himself, in accordance with the laws of cybernetics. From ten years of laboratory work emerges the “audio-vocal effect”: any change in hearing ipso facto entails a change in the voice (timbre, laryngeal posture, breathing, facial expression). The ear, through the adjustment of the ossicular chain, opens up passbands according to an accommodation time peculiar to each language. The electronic ear puts this discovery into practice: through a play of filters, it imposes on any subject, even a recalcitrant one, a predetermined mode of hearing, recreating the conditions for integrating a foreign language as those of the mother tongue.

Historical context — This 1960 lecture marks the public presentation, before UNESCO, of the application of the Tomatis effect to language learning. It formalises the audio-vocal loop and the use of the electronic ear, founding elements of the Tomatian pedagogy of modern languages.

The Voice (1962)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 1962 Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis approaches the voice from the angle of psycho-physiological accommodation and the mechanism regulating emission. Speech presupposes a permanent self-control, exercised by a “servo-mechanism” of which the ear is the first stage. He develops the notion of the leading ear — on the right in the right-handed, on the left in the left-handed — the sole bearer of musicality: its suppression immediately alters the voice of the singer as of the speaker. The author links stammering to a physiological delay in the return of self-information (“delayed feed-back”), occurring around 0.15 second, the average value of the French syllable. He posits the approximate equation linking gain and time, illustrated by the case of the deaf-mute. Finally, the audiogram reveals the registers (tenor, baritone, bass), the bands of selectivity peculiar to nationalities and the ravages of noise (auditory scotoma around 4,000 Hz), confirming that “a subject emits only the sounds he is capable of hearing”.

Historical context — A major synthesis of the early 1960s, this article gathers the key notions of Tomatis’s work: the leading ear, the audio-vocal loop, the auditory aetiology of stammering and laterality. It consolidates the “law” according to which the voice reproduces only what the ear perceives, the foundation of the whole subsequent method.

Results of the hearing examination of 180 children (1962)

Author: Bruno Castets, R. Lefort, A. Tomatis, M. Reyns Date: June 1962 Publication: Annales médico-psychologiques, n° 1 (June 1962) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

This collective work reports on the systematic audiometric examination of 180 children aged 7 to 13, hospitalised at the Centre de psychothérapie infantile in Armentières and presenting mental disorders. The authors renounce any classical nosological classification, judged ill-suited to the clinical realities of childhood. Out of 103 interpretable examinations, the vast majority reveal significant auditory disorders — hypoacusis and deafness of various types — as well as a frequent deficit of auditory selectivity, with no neurological history to explain them. The authors then question the place of these disorders in the genesis of mental disturbances: the child who hears poorly understands poorly, obeys poorly, and finds himself unjustly held to be lazy or backward. They suggest a joint aetiology, both organic and affective, sound being the primary path of access to language and to the socio-cultural structure.

Historical context — Published in a leading psychiatric journal, this article testifies to the clinical and institutional anchoring of Tomatis’s theses in the early 1960s. It extends the audio-psychological hypothesis to the field of children’s mental disorders, linking listening, language and intellectual development.

The ear, nose and throat specialist faced with problems of language (1964)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: April 1964 Publication: L’Hôpital (special issue) Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Here Tomatis argues that the ear, nose and throat specialist, custodian of the organs of speech, should take charge of the study of hearing in its relations with language. Trained first in surgery and in the lesion, the specialist, in his view, neglects the phonatory function itself, whereas the ear is its essential regulator. The author describes the three parameters of the verbal flow — rate, quantity (intensity) and quality (timbre) — all governed by the auditory sensor. He draws on the “delayed feed-back” test of Lee and Black (1949) and on that of Lombard to show how a disturbance of self-hearing engenders stammering and vocal disorders. He finally affirms the existence of a dominant leading ear, the foundation of laterality and the very condition of articulate language.

Historical context — This article condenses Tomatis’s founding intuitions on the audio-vocal loop, a few years after Husson’s formulation of the “Tomatis effect” at the Academy of Medicine (1957). It prefigures audio-psycho-phonology and the therapeutic use of the electronic ear that he would later develop.

Language (1970)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 1970 Publication: Société de Médecine de Paris, Revue d’Enseignement Post-universitaire, n° 2 Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

Tomatis proposes to make language an object of clinical examination in its own right, integrated into the medical assessment. He conceives it as a measurable production of the body, governed by three parameters — intensity, quality, rhythm — placed under the control of the ear, the sensor of an audio-vocal cybernetic loop. He defends the pre-eminence of the right ear, a shorter return path, and links lateralisation to the intra-uterine genesis of the desire to communicate, then to the symbolic relationship with the father. The author then details a precise clinical examination (voice, facial asymmetry, synkinesias, designation of the ear, self-information), a graded pathology (absence of language, dysarthrias, stammering, dyslexias) and a treatment founded on auditory re-education by electronic filtering and listening switches.

Historical context — A text of maturity, it systematises audio-psycho-phonology into a complete clinical protocol and takes up the theses of the leading ear and intra-uterine listening. It testifies to Tomatis’s determination to inscribe his method in ordinary medical practice.

Music and the child (1972)

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis Date: 11-14 May 1972 Publication: 1st Regional Symposium on Music, Pierrelatte Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

A communication read in the author’s absence by Marie-Louise Aucher. Here Tomatis presents music as the major mode of bodily education, fitted to prepare the body to receive language: it integrates rhythms, hence time, and trains verticality, hence space. He distinguishes “charging” and “discharging” sounds, describes the entry of sound through the ear and the skin, and details the role of the pneumogastric nerve and the auditory nerve, pillars of laterality and of cortical recharging. Favouring high frequencies, rich in energy, he consecrates Mozart as the energising musician. He finally links intra-uterine listening and singing to the genesis of language and argues for their reintegration into pedagogy.

Historical context — Given at the threshold of the 1970s, this text broadens audio-psycho-phonology towards an aesthetics and a pedagogy of sound, in which Mozart’s music and the filtered listening of the maternal voice become tools of development. It illustrates the opening of the work of Tomatis, the son of a singer, towards the sung voice and the education of the child.

Use of the electronic ear for English classes

Author: Dr Alfred Tomatis (pedagogical application) Date: experimentation 1973-1977 Facsimile: Read the original document (PDF)

This pedagogical report relates an experiment conducted with French-speaking pupils of the Athénée royal in Comines. Starting from the observation that understanding spoken English poses specific difficulties for French speakers — perceived speed of delivery, inaudible final phonemes, common words not recognised —, the authors attribute the problem not to intelligence but to hearing. They invoke the Tomatis law: “the larynx emits only the harmonics that the ear can hear”. An experimental group is conditioned by the electronic ear (filtered music, filtered English, English sibilants), while a control group follows an audio-oral method. Each language possessing its own band of selectivity, the device educates the middle ear through the electronic switch and right lateralisation. The results show an objective improvement in thresholds at high frequencies and a clearer voice in the trained group.

Historical context — This document illustrates the concrete diffusion of the electronic ear in the school teaching of languages during the 1970s. It puts into practice the “Tomatis laws” and the notion of the ethnic ear, extending into the pedagogical environment the audio-vocal principles set out as early as 1960.