Central Auditory Processing  skills can be categorized (with some overlap) into three functional units (Ferre, 1997p.4)

Attention/arousal unit – includes: selective attention, ability to attend to a target in background noise, arousal or attention to a new auditory signal; and the ability to localize a sound source in space.

Sensory reception skills include: signal detection, short-term storage amongst others

Output planning skills include: integration, long-term  memory among others

Pure tone audiometry with a ‘normal’ audiogram

(Bellis, 1996, Ferre, 1997)

Exhibit One or More of the Audiological, Communicative or Educational Symptoms which may indicate the need  to seek a CAPD screening test such as SCAN: A Screening Test for Auditory Processing Disorders or a full battery of CAPD identification tests.(Ferre, 1997p.26)

Comprehensive Identification involves a number of different tests.  The specific  tests used differ according to the particular audiologist.

Identification and management of CAPD, should be multidisciplinary.  Speech-language pathologists, psychologists, Neuro psychologists, learning disabilities specialists, social workers, audiologists, neurologists and psychiatrists all may be involved in a child’s care (Ferre, 1997p.35)

Auditory therapy (aural rehabilitation) is recommended.  Possibly provided by a speech-language pathologist (Ferre, 1997p.47)

Specific goals for the therapy are improvement of a child’s:

1.        decoding and discrimination

2.        noise tolerance

3.        ability to utilize visual cues and strategies for communication purposes

4.        ability to use self-help and compensatory strategies for improved communication

(Ferre, 1997p.47)

Other therapies may include:

Neural re-training e.g.

Fast ForWord (Scientific Learning Corporation)

Earobics (Cognitive Concepts)

Sound therapy (Pittelkow, 2001)

Include:

May have trouble:

  understanding

  speech in noisy

  situations

  hearing in groups

  listening

(Ferre, 1997p.5)

May have poor speech or language skills

May seem to hear, but not understand what people say

May have poor peer relations and/or

May have  poor self-esteem.

(Ferre, 1997 p. 5)

May have impulsive behaviour

May have a short attention span

May become anxious or stressed when required to listen

May be easily distracted

May be disorganized

May have difficulty following directions

May have trouble remembering what was said

May have poor reading or phonics skills

May have poor spelling skills

May display discrepancy between verbal and performance scores on IQ tests(Ferre, 1997p.5)

Classroom Acoustics analysed and improved by :

Teachers voice signal to noise ratio enhanced to at least +15 dB (ASHA,1995)

Reverberation reduced to no greater than .0.4 s-0.6(Finitzo-Hiever & Tillman, 1978).

Ambient noise level should be no higher than 35 dBA (Smaldino & Crandell, 1995).

Installation of an FM sound-field amplification system to help achieve the above requirements e.g.(Crandell & Smaldino, 1995, Flexer, 1995, Palmer, 1997)

Recommendations need to be specific to the particular child’s deficits and needs.  Thus instead of ‘general’ recommendations that may assist individual CAPD children, but which also may hinder some CAPD children, Bellis(1996, p.198) offers some Smart Listening suggestions:

1.        reduction in or elimination of obvious adverse noise sources within the listening environment

2.        education of educators and other significant individuals regarding listening and the nature of auditory disorders

3.        optimization of the learning environment based on the individual child’s needs