I am a special education major at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I am in an assessment class and we are trying to determine how to distinguish between an Articulation Disorder, and a Hearing Problem.
I know that for a Articulation Disorder that the student will be unable to correctly produce sounds, substitute “wabbit” for “rabbit”, omission’s “boo” for “blue, and distortions like “schleep” for “sleep”.
Outside of a hearing test, what are some ways to test for a hearing problem. Do you stand behind a student and whisper to see if they respond?
Thank you for any and all help.
Matt Sohm
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
If the child has a history of ear infections they will have problems with articulation because they haven’t heard the sounds in language the same and will have a deficient auditory memory. For children with an articulation disorder an SLP would do auditory bombardment to strengthen that channel and also do lots of tactile things to help them learn how to articulate. Oral motor therapy is suggested if the child is having difficulty articulating due to apraxia, meaning they have trouble moving their tongue to the positions necessary to articulate sounds.
A child with a hearing impairment doesn’t hear the sounds clearly and articulates what he hears. Usually they will have a lot of nasality in their speech and speak louder than other children.
You can test for auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness to see how the child is hearing the differences in the speech sounds. Ask an SLP what tests they would use for a child with these issues because that is their area of expertise. I think the SCAN-R is one test that an SLP can do to determine if the child is having some problems with auditory processing.
By the ways, I am hearing impaired and in graduate school to become an SLP.
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
But Patti, you do agree with me that hearing screening is the only appropriate first step to take in identifying a hearing problem, don’t you? He seemed to be asking if there was some other way to identify a hearing loss. I’m sure we both know that the artic of hearing impaired kids varies greatly.And hearing and vision screening is usually the first step of testing done when a child is referred for academic or speech/language problems.
Janis
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
Seems like that what the professionals in both fields are for (audiologist and speech pathologist). All kidding aside, there are certain behaviors that a child with a hearing loss might (and I stress might) exhibit in a classroom. For example, not responding to their name consistently, not responding to questions consistently- not with answers but with some sort of alerting behavior such as looking up or around. An artic problem would not affect how a child response to sound in general. Still, many hearing-impaired children have passed the “doctors” screening of whispering in the office or jingling keys and looking for a response. I would caution you strongly against that. Hearing loss can be only at some pitches and not others, which is why a speech pathologist does a hearing screening first, before an evaluation.
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
That is absolutely right, Lori. I am amazed every year the children who are identified at school with hearing impairment for the first time. Someone overlooked their problems for 5 or more years, so that does indicate that informal checks are very unreliable except in the case of a severe loss which is fairly obvious.
Janis
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
I thought that doing a hearing screening was the obvious solution but still if a teacher doesn’t have access to an audiometer for a screening they are up a creek. Some of the other things I mentioned can be indicators of hearing loss and or CAPD. I thought he wanted some other ideas to probe for a hearing loss besides a hearing test. My daughter had all the signs for a hearing loss and I didn’t pick up on it until she was 5. If anyone should have known it should have been me since I have the same loss. But I didn’t and we have been behind the eight ball since then..
Re: Hearing Problem v. Articulation Disorder
I am not a professional but I want to chime in. Some signs of hearing loss and possible apd are saying ‘huh’ or ‘what’ a lot, giving answers that are totally unrelated to questions being asked, not being able to discriminate between sounds or words, ‘well, whale’. Example of apd, park ranger asks what that creature is in the pond, mom tells son ‘it’s a turtle’, son raises hand and says ‘it’s a turkey’. Acting out or not paying attention in class.
As far as the articulation, I would say the majority of kids with a lot of ear infections, with ear tubes, probably get a lot of attention from the ent and audio. I know not all.Health insurance and all. My younger son had an articulation disorder that was addressed at age 3-4yrs through the hospital slp at 2 times a week for 30 minutes one on one. I asked the pediatrician at age 2yrs and some months because at least the mom should be able to understand her kids babytalk and I couldn’t understand even half. So we were referred. He had 6 consonants and repeatedly used the ‘whuh’ sound for just about everything. He couldn’t even say the hard ‘k’ and ‘g’ sounds til he was almost 4 yrs. He came through pretty well but was in speech at school for the ‘r’ sound in 3rd grade when it was no longer age appropriate. He does well now. I can’t see a child getting past kindergarten with a problem as bad as that but I am sure it has happened.
Something to think about also is seasonal allergies, it’s hard to hear and pay attention when your ears are stopped up. Just trying to help out.
Matt,
Schools should do periodic mass hearing screenings to identify children with hearing loss. Other things such as an auditory processing disorder may mimic a hearing problem. But there is not a substitute for doing a hearing screening and then a follow-up audiological eval on children who fail the screening.
Janis