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| Auditory Processing Disorders in Children Post-Institutionalization |
| page 2 |
| Posted by gwdadmin |
2001-06-15 |
Index
»
» Jay R. Lucker, Ed.D...
» page 2
Why is this important for us to understand? Because children can have problems in one or more of the many systems and processes critical for appropriate auditory processing to take place. For example, the mere development of auditory skills requires proper stimulation. Research has demonstrated that children as young as a few months can discriminate and distinguish between their mothers’ voices and those of other people, even women with voices of similar pitch to the mother. At the same age of 2-3 months, infants can discriminate changes that differentiate sounds of speech such as "bah" vs. "gah" or even "pah" vs. "bah." Yet, these infants cannot produce the "p," "b," or "g" sounds or can merely produce sounds that are "p," "b," or "g" –like in their reflexive babbling. However, the ability to make these auditory discriminatory distinctions is critical for later development of a speech sound system (called a phonological system). Furthermore, this phonological system serves as a base for phonics in reading.
Children who have been institutionalized may have undergone auditory deprivation. How can they learn to distinguish one voice from another when the sounds of their world, in the orphanage, are a jumble of many children and infants crying or, perhaps, music played randomly without purpose other than to, hopefully, soothe the children. For many, the music can serve as auditory stimulation, but stimulating what processes? This can lead to underdeveloped or malformed processing capabilities in many.
Is the situation hopeless? No. If it were hopeless, you would not have given all of your love and support to your children. And you can help you children even if they have APD. When a child seems to mishear or not respond appropriately to auditory messages, consider that the child has some auditory processing problems and may not just be misbehaving. Some of the symptoms include:
Inability to follow multistep requests, directions, commands
Repeating inaccurately what was said to the child
Following through on only part of a verbal message
Difficulties with early reading and writing skills
Errors in speech such as problems producing "r," "er," and "l"
Sensitivity to sounds, especially sounds that others might say are not too loud or are not annoying (like ticking clocks, beeps from microwaves and computers)
Sensitivity to soft sounds such that the child hears and is overly aware of sounds that others barely hear or you are not even aware of until the sound is closer (such as a child who hears a car turning the corner one street away and asks "Is that daddy driving home?" and it isn’t until daddy’s car is visible from the house that you realize the child heard daddy’s car turning the corner)
Fluctuations in hearing so that sometimes the child seems to hear fine and other times seems not to hear well at all (often associated with chronic middle ear infections and fluid)
Slow development of oral language skills especially understanding or receptive language abilities
If your child shows these symptoms or you suspect he or she has auditory processing problems, you should consider having a comprehensive auditory processing evaluation done. Since, as described above, auditory processing involves auditory factors, language factors and cognitive factors, all three areas should be assessed if they have not been done. Cognitive areas are assessed by psychologists, neuropsychologists, or some educational specialists who hold degrees in psychology. The language assessment should look at both language knowledge (often referred to as receptive and expressive language abilities) as well as language understanding or processing that looks at patterns of errors in order to determine specific areas of language that are deficient such as the lexical (word meaning) level, the morphological level (word parts), sentence (syntax or grammar) level, and sentential understanding (semantic) level as well as language use (pragmatic level). Language testing is usually accomplished by certified and licensed speech-lanugage pathologists. Last, a comprehensive audiological evaluation should be completed to rule out any possible hearing problems as well as determine how your child takes in an deals with auditory-verbal messages that have been distorted, altered or presented in unusual ways purposefully to assess auditory processing abilities.
The outcome from a comprehensive and appropriate assessment of all areas of auditory processing abilities can lead to your understanding how your child processes what he or she hears and what your child is and is not able to handle. Perhaps it is the rapid rate of on-going verbal information that is causing the problem and slowing down the rate, providing pauses between ideas or sentences for complex processing time to elapse, and using simpler language to make processing less demanding can help your child. Maybe the problem is the overload of too much auditory stimuli with a child who does not yet know how to select what is and what is not relevant for processing. Applying technology to help the child could mean a child seen by teachers as having severe attention problems vs. a child for whom the world of sound is less chaotic. In the end, getting your child properly assessed and having auditory processing appropriately diagnosed can lead to significant improvements in interpersonal communication, learning, and academic development. And, what is even better, we can help our children succeed and meet their fullest potentials as adults.
References
Chermak, G., and Musiek, F. (1997). Central Auditory Processing Disorders: New Perspectives. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group, Inc.
Katz, J., Stecker, N., and Henderson, D. (1992). Central Auditory Processing Disorders: A Transdisciplinary Approach. St. Louis: Mosby Year Book.
Author’s Bio: Dr. Jay R. Lucker is a certified/licensed audiologist and speech-language pathologist in private practice specializing in auditory processing. He currently is associated with Dr. Ronald Federici practice, Psychological and Neuropsychological Associates, P.C., in Alexandria, VA. He may be reached at (703) 548-0721 or via email at [email protected]. If you would like to learn more about Dr. Lucker, visit Dr. Federici’s website at www.DRFEDERICI.com or the NCAPD website at www.ncapd.org where you can also learn more about auditory processing disorders and view a simulation of these problems.
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Jay R. Lucker, Ed.D....
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