About 10% of children have difficulty learning to talk for a variety of reasons and may show particular difficulties in the areas of:
There are key cognitive skills which need to be in place to successfully develop speech and language and we find that auditory processing is frequently difficult for students who are struggling with language skills including reading.
Auditory processing is the role the brain plays in hearing. When Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is present there is a breakdown in how the brain deals with the information from the ears, so despite normal hearing, there are difficulties with receiving auditory information, remembering it, sequencing it and therefore understanding it. This may lead to slow language development and also reading skills as it is difficult to link sounds to letters.
Whilst the majority of students with language impairments or dyslexia have auditory processing difficulties, there are also students whose language has developed normally but have some difficulty with auditory processing. This may only surface in primary school when multi-tasking comes into play, when a child is required to think while listening or reading. If a child has a mild auditory processing disorder, he/she may very well be able to learn to decode text as expected, but will run into trouble with reading comprehension which requires decoding the text AND understanding the content.
Clues to difficulties with Auditory Processing
· Misunderstands what you say · Requests information be repeated
· Gives slow or delayed responses · Asks ‘What?’ or ‘Huh?’ frequently
· Has trouble following oral directions · Seems reluctant to engage in conversation
· Worse in background noise
Watch a short video from Speech and Language Pathologist Dr Martha Burns on Auditory Processing:
- Speech - producing certain sounds or types of sounds
- Language – understanding what is said, finding the right words, linking words together in sentences
- Social Communication Skills – understanding the social components of language, such as appropriate use of eye contact,
There are key cognitive skills which need to be in place to successfully develop speech and language and we find that auditory processing is frequently difficult for students who are struggling with language skills including reading.
Auditory processing is the role the brain plays in hearing. When Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is present there is a breakdown in how the brain deals with the information from the ears, so despite normal hearing, there are difficulties with receiving auditory information, remembering it, sequencing it and therefore understanding it. This may lead to slow language development and also reading skills as it is difficult to link sounds to letters.
Whilst the majority of students with language impairments or dyslexia have auditory processing difficulties, there are also students whose language has developed normally but have some difficulty with auditory processing. This may only surface in primary school when multi-tasking comes into play, when a child is required to think while listening or reading. If a child has a mild auditory processing disorder, he/she may very well be able to learn to decode text as expected, but will run into trouble with reading comprehension which requires decoding the text AND understanding the content.
Clues to difficulties with Auditory Processing
· Misunderstands what you say · Requests information be repeated
· Gives slow or delayed responses · Asks ‘What?’ or ‘Huh?’ frequently
· Has trouble following oral directions · Seems reluctant to engage in conversation
· Worse in background noise
Watch a short video from Speech and Language Pathologist Dr Martha Burns on Auditory Processing:
