Description: In addition to being aware of sound, the student pays attention to the sound for a few minutes.

Attention / Alerting responses are characterized by sustained, observable behaviors. Sometimes, children will increase their physical activity while attending, sometimes children will become still while alerting, but the key feature of this response level is time. Sometimes children who demonstrate this level of use of hearing might attend for one or two seconds to one or two sound sources. Progress in learning to use their hearing could be measured by an increase in the length of attending behaviors and also in the number of sound sources they will attend to.

This early level of use of hearing is crucial to developing higher levels of hearing. If a child demonstrates higher levels of hearing usage, then it is assumed that he/she has accomplished this level.