Don't You Get It? Living with Auditory Learning Disabilities (eBook)

Loraine Alderman, Harvey Edell, Jay R. Lucker (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012 | 1. Auflage
106 Seiten
First Edition Design Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-62287-071-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Don't You Get It? specifically looks at people over three generations of the same family and others as well , who have lived with APD. It demonstrates the struggles that these people went through and shows how they worked and overcame their problems in communicating and learning.

---

"e;Don't You Get It?"e; specifically looks at people over three generations of the same family and others as well , who have lived with APD. It demonstrates the struggles that these people went through and shows how they worked and overcame their problems in communicating and learning.

Textauszug

 

Chapter Two - What are Auditory Information Processing Disorders? ~ by Jay R. Lucker Ed.D., CCC-A/SLP, FAAA

 

Auditory Information Processing Disorders (APD) involve  deficits related to a person having difficulty:

1. taking in information through their auditory systems (all parts of their ears),

2. getting that information to the brain (via the auditory pathways and related or interconnected pathways in the central nervous system),

3. forming meaningful mental images of that information in order to comprehend the meaning of the message and act appropriately (Lucker 2005a, 2007a).

A generic definition of an auditory information processing disorder could be a disorder in understanding spoken language due to an imperfect ability to listen. This definition of APD is cited from the definition of a specific learning disability in the special education law known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA.  Many people refer to these deficits as Auditory Processing Disorders (APD), central Auditory Processing Disorders (CAPD), and (central) Auditory Processing Disorders ((C)APD). Medwetsky (2006) coined the term Spoken Language Processing Disorder for APD in order to expand the terminology to be in line with what people actually see when a person has problems processing spoken language.

Lucker (2005a, 2007a) expanded the broader view of APD taken by Medwetsky to take in not only the processing of spoken language, but the processing of any auditory information whether linguistic or nonlinguistic (such as understanding the meaning of someone knocking on a door). Using the plural for the name indicates that it is a spectrum of disorders or, rather, various categories of processing that can breakdown in the total process of taking in information through the auditory system.

In 2007(a), Lucker described APD as involving five different systems, not just the auditory system as is the common approach among professionals (Jerger and Musiek, 2000; ASHA, 2005a; Geffner, 2007). It is Lucker’s approach to APD that was used in assessing the cases presented in this book.

Many people believe that APD is a recently identified disorder.  A review of the history of APD in children (Lucker, 2007b) indicates that the first publications that specifically discussed problems that children without hearing loss have in processing auditory information were in books published in the mid-to-late 1950s.

In 1969, a monograph published through the National Institutes of Health first presented the term central auditory dysfunction in children to describe APD (Chalfant and Scheffelin 1969).  About 10 years later, at the first national, professional conference on APD, the name was changed to Central Auditory Processing Disorder or CAPD and that label stuck until the 1990s (see Keith, 1977). In the fall of 2007, a second conference was held, sponsored by Dr. Keith, to provide a 30 year update. (see: www.apdcincinnati.com/faculty1.php)

During the 1990s, a number of professionals argued that the use of “central” in CAPD argued that it was a disorder of the central auditory nervous system (CANS) was too limiting since much of the research did not support a CANS focal disorder in children with APD. In 2000, Jerger and Musiek recommended the term APD to replace the older term CAPD. Then, in 2005, the Technical Report from the Committee on Auditory Processing Disorders of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) called the disorder a (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder or (C)APD. However, whether you call the disorder CAPD, APD, or (C)APD, we are all discussing disorders that lead to problems making sense out of the information received via the ear and brain that eventually leads to the comprehension of that information. In 2005, 2007, Lucker proposed the broader term, Auditory Information Processing Disorder, continuing the use of the initials APD.

 

Approaches to APD

Not only is there disagreement as to terminology used to name this disorder, there are different approaches and definitions professionals have as to what they call APD. 

The traditional approach to APD takes one of three paths.  One path may be referred to as the “test battery approach” or the “Pass/Fail model.”  In this approach, APD is determined by giving a child a battery of APD tests, then determining whether the child passed or failed specific tests. It is then concluded that the child does not have or does have an APD. Some professionals using this “Pass/Fail” approach may go further to describe the specific tests on which the person failed. For example, if a child failed a test of understanding speech in the presence of noise, the professional might state that “Today’s testing supports a conclusion that Johnny has an APD with problems understanding speech in noise.”  The professional might go further describing how problems understanding speech in noise could affect Johnny, and even provide suggestions for helping Johnny cope better with speech presented in noise.

There is one problem with that approach. Because there could be many reasons why a child would have problems understanding speech in the presence of the noise, there is no specific identification as to why Johnny has such problems. Thus, unless you can identify the why of the behavior, you cannot appropriately approach treating the problem.

One possible factor for Johnny having problems with speech understanding in noise is that he can’t focus on the speaker because he cannot both focus and filter out the noise at the same time. Thus, the noise becomes an auditory distracter. Another factor could be that the noise masked out auditory cues from the relevant speech message distorting the message, and Johnny cannot make sense of the distortion. A third factor is one related to an attention problem. Johnny cannot appropriately choose to what he must attend and the noise seems more interesting than the teacher speaking.  Treating Johnny for an auditory distractibility problem when the problem is one of the other two described above is not appropriate.

If Johnny’s problem is noise distractibility, we need to remove the distractions as well as teach him how to be less distracted.  Such intervention would not necessarily help a child who is not really distracted by the noise but does not know how to appropriately attend to the primary speaker. For the child who has problems understanding the message in quiet as well as in noise, removing the noise will not make him better able to understand the primary message. Helping him better understand messages even in quiet is the appropriate treatment.

One of the major weaknesses of the “Pass/Fail” model is that it does not seek to identify what is really at the foundation of the problem. Therefore, appropriate interventions may not be identified.

A second approach to APD is what can be referred to as a neurophysiological approach. This seems to be the most common approach used in research being conducted on auditory information processing today. This perspective involves two factors. One is that young children’s central auditory nervous systems or CANS undergo a great deal of normal maturation until a specific age. This age is usually identified as around 12 years. Thus, any child failing APD tests prior to the age of 12 is diagnosed as having either an immature central auditory system or has developmental problems that need us to wait and watch to see whether normal auditory system development occurs in early adolescence.

Many of the professionals holding this approach identify the lowest age at which children can be tested for APD to be around seven. (Katz, 2005; Lucker, 2005b) Thus, parents are told they cannot have their child tested until age seven, or that the results of APD testing merely identifies their child having an immature system.

For some professionals taking a neurophysiological approach, the focus is to identify where in the CANS the disorder occurs. For example, a report reviewed by the author stated that a child might have a disorder in his auditory brainstem pathways leading from the auditory nerve or eighth nerve to the upper brainstem on the way to the brain. The evaluator, not the author, referred the child for tests to identify the presence of brainstem pathology. The author was consulted to review the data and found that there was no support to identify this child as having a possible brainstem tumor or problem such as multiple sclerosis or ALS. In contrast, the boy had problems with auditory distractibility needing work to improve his abilities to focus on the primary speaker and learn to ignore the noise.

Follow-up with a pediatric neurotologist (ear doctor who specializes in disorders of the nerves and brain) revealed absolutely no abnormalities for this boy. Thus, after hundreds of dollars have been spent, the parents and the school district were still at the same point they were when the initial referral for the APD assessment was made. This led to referring the child for a second opinion. Based on this author’s interpretation, the child was offered accommodations and treatment and, eventually, improved his abilities to listen in noise and was able to function successfully in the regular education setting.

This case...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.10.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Studium
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Sonder-, Heil- und Förderpädagogik
• ISBN-10: 1-62287-071-9 / 1622870719
• ISBN-13: 978-1-62287-071-4 / 9781622870714