Does CAPD exist?

I often wonder this myself. I think it is because it is something new.

I am sure I will get bombarded with the opposing view but I often wonder if that is the reason that teachers, educators, and doctors can trust the diagnosis.

I wonder if way back in the day, if when new LD were discovered if parents had this same type of discussion.

I always remember when I am talking with my Grandmother. She explained some classic sign of what now would be considered dyslexia and CAPD in my Father. She tells me how she had to take him to a special reading school becuase he wasn’t able to keep up in school. When you mention disabilities she says that kids are just lazy and use LD’s as a crutch. So I wonder how much of the negative information is born from that type of mentality.

K.

As a hearing impaired person and a speech professional I have personally experienced and treated people for CAPD. It is so exasperating to be in a room and everyone is talking at once and you are trying to hear the one person who is talking to you and you can’t understand them. Yes, I hear everything they are saying but I can’t understand…is really frustrating and embarrasing at the same time.

I have the same problem, when my son talks to me and there is lots of other background noise I am lost! Between myslef, my son, my sister and my brother, it often sounds like we are speaking another language, no one can understand or hear each other. Some times it is funny but other times it is so frustrating!! But you obvioulsy know what I mean!!

K.

I’m sure there are “diagnosticians” who see CAPD behind *every* problem — just as other folks see Their Solution as Everyman’s Solution. Like ADD — or for that matter, dyslexia — there are those who are just positive that it’s an excuse for laziness, or just a euphemism for not having enough brain cells to rub together.
They’re wrong.

Isn’t it funny? I do the SAME thing! I’ve always called it white noise deafness because it also occurs when low level machinery buzzes (like a computer hum, for instance) but crowd noised drive me crazy. No information registers at all. Half the time when my son and I are talking, I get the feeling that both of us are agreeing with each other without understanding half the words the other one has said.

I’m going back to school next year to get
my masters in teaching.
I’ll be teaching middle school to high school.

And I was thinking about LD kids in the classroom.

I have three children, all different degrees of dyslexic,
with different strengths and weaknesses.
So the*label* dyslexia doesn’t help, other than id-ing a problem.

What I would want to know - is how best to help this child.
I will not be able to research every diagnoses and I would realize
that just research won’t tell me what I want to know - I will want
someone to tell me things like this child needs:

to sit up front
copies of notes
extra time on test
and all the stuff we all know so well.

And I would want that information, if possible, from the parent.
I give our teachers that information.
Bar that I would want it from the sped teacher.
Then I would want to feel out the child, see what he/she could
tell me.

But I think the best info would come from the parent.
And I would like every parent to be just like you all on this
board…

Anne.

I hope that all my children are lucky enough to have teachers such as yourself who understand what it is like to have a learning disability and are willing to do what is best for the child!!

It is a shame that not all teacher can remember why they are teaching!!

Thanks
K.

My son is high functioning autistic. DX from a very respected private specialist. He goes to a special ed preschool run by people with speech and language backgrounds. They all are constantly implying that my son just has CAPD. Then they are surprised when “he can be so stubborn” and still doesn’t make appropriate eye contact after two years of intervention. I see children with DX of CAPD, ADD, sensory issues etc. but “they’re not autistic.” And I consistantly hear the administration refusing to agree with children’s private autistic DX until they are transitioning into kindergarten and somebody elses budget problem.

I think part of the problem is the similiarities between APD, ADD and phonological proccessing. If you cannot proccess the sounds correctly (APD), it is very difficicult to attend to them (ADD). I once had to write down and keep track of the errors my daughter made in choosing words and forming sentences for our S/L therapist. (ie: Tell me when its the other day, the Easter Bunny week. OR Everybody hadded big brothers and big sisters and some kids like my number and some aren’t my number gaved them show and tell for them.) I said to the S/L therapist, that if I did not have paper and pen handy, I could not recall exactly how she said the sentence. This very wise S/L said, ” That is because your brain has no reference for it. It can’t proccess something that makes no sense to it.” Just like my daughter. She is dyslexic. Further, it is also known that in order to for the brain to process info, it breaks it down into its small parts (phonemes), understands it and places it in a place that it can retrieve when needed. When your brain can’t process sounds adequateley (phonological processing disorder), it can’t make sense of it and therefore reliably recall it when needed. Okay, my daughter went in the sound proof booth and the audiologist said that she doens not have APD. Well, by testing she has significant phonological processing disorder. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that her brain is not processing the sounds (APD)?………Learning disabilities are not an exact science. That’s the truth. We have come to know so much more in the last 10 yrs, but so much more needs to be learned about the complexities of the child who simply learns different………

That’s very interesting! My son only seems to have troulbe when it come to recalling the letter and the sound/symbol relationship. He does have some problems with using the wrong tense. However, I read a book once by Janet Doman about teaching your child to read, it said that many children don’t understand the use of the correct tenses and in their minds create their own system. Usually as they get older it will start to correct itslef.

Also, in my case, I don’t know how reliable my speech and language or achievement test were. When I had them reviewed my special ed advocate she highlighted several times where the pathologist didn’t take the first answer she gave him. She coached him until he got the right answer. The same with the achievment testing.

I am not knew to this game but sometimtes I am still naive. I didn’t know that the sped teacher can’t evaluate or shouldn’t evaluate for fine or gross motor skils. Fine motor skills is to be done by an OT and well I forget who does Gross motor but it isn’t her. She also coached, I think I mentioned before in another post, that she showed me a work sample that he did with her and it just wasn’t done independently.

Anyway, your post was very interesting. I will have to mention this to the audiologist in the fall when my son is tested.

Thanks
K.

My daughter has significant difficulty learning the numbers and the letters/sounds as well, although she has made improvement this year with the letters. When I had a neuropsychologist reveiw the testing that my daughter had, she said that many of the tests had a “floor” effect. My daughter was not able to do some of the tasks on the test, so there was no score in these areas, or she simply guessed at the answers. This inflates the tests results. It is frustrating, when the school speech/language eval my daughter, along with the rest of the team (educ. eval, IQ is superior), they found nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, she “scored average or above average” in almost all areas. When we went indepedantly, it was a different story. Not only was her learning disability proven, but proven to be significant. It is not only the tests, but the tests chosen as well as how the results are interpreted. If a child cannot do parts of a test that other children her age can, this has meaning too. The important thing is to find where the learning is breaking down, and intervene in those areas.

I think many school professionals and the general population do not understand disabilities that cannot be seen. This is why some do not believe ADD exists, dyslexia, dyscalcula, even something like ODD. It costs money to recognize it, and if your own family’s children are “okay” then it is easier to blame parenting and the child (ie: uninvolved parents, lazy student, not enough sleep and whatever else). To put it bluntly I cannot even get a member of my own family to believe that ADD exists and they know the child. They believe it is a matter of “training the child”. That is bcs they just don’t get it and never will!
I just do not discuss the issue with this family member and do what needs to get done.

If your child was tested by an audiologist and they were not found to have an auditory processing disorder that means that their brain is processing what they hear within normal limits. However, many people confuse articulation and phonological disorders with auditory processing disorders. They are different. I have done speech therapy with children who have had articulation disorders and apraxia. One child in particular was diagnosed with apraxia but part of the problem was chronic ear infections had left her with a weak auditory memory. I would have to say rhymes and music over and over again slowly so that she could program her auditory memory. Her intelligibility increased as I SLOWED my speech down so that she could hear the differences and she would watch my mouth so that she could move her tongue in the positions necessary to articulate the sounds correctly.

Many children who have phonological disorders have accompanying articulation difficulties. Part of this is due to their immature oral motor musculature and they go through an developmental process as the assimilate the correct productions of the adult sounds in their speech. Just because they can’t physically PRODUCE the sounds correctly doesn’t mean that is HOW they are HEARING and PROCESSING the sounds. Those are two different issues.

CAPD is a neurological issue in how the brain processes sounds what you are describing can also be an articualtion issue and also how a child develops as their phonological system matures.

All correct, and I am NOT saying that they are the same thing. What if a child can produce most sounds correctly but misplaces them in words? Or leave out sound that belong in words? (ie. begot for forgot, afused for confused, arade for parade) I am just saying that alot of these processes are connected, making it difficult sometimes to see exactly where the problem lies.

CAPD often goes with Sensory Integration Dysfunction(SI), and many pediatric patients with SI are labeled as autistic too quickly without doing itnerventions for SI. I myself thought some of my patients were autistic and after SI therapy (mainly OTs so it but some speech therapists do too) it turned out they were not. CAPD can cause symptoms that mimic ADHD more than autism though, and it can create very defiant behavior. Because a child does not hear the question on a regular basis they do things to try to cotnrol their environment in advance to minimize the things they miss. This can result in stubborness. Just CAPD would not create all the symptoms you describe, but SI with concomitant CAPD could. CAPD is common in kids with SI. It can also be present in students with autism. It may take awhile to factor it out.

Yes, it does. I have it and I treat it. It is very often related to Sensory integration dysfunction )SI)or goes along with it. It often occurs along with apraxia of speech or limb and dyslexia , at least in my expereince. It can be present by itself. It is usually found by a speech therapist and confirmed by an audiologist. The auditory system is a very complex sensory system with many levels of processing. It s part of a feedback loop involving speech output. If patients can have visual processing disorders it just makes sesne they can have auditory ones. People believe it doesn’t exist because they often attribute it to something else , because they can’t see it, because they don’t want to pay for it and the like. Treatment involves a combination of remediation with a speech therapist and compensatory techniques. Music therapy esp. that done by an SLP can really help too.

and very common for children. The syllables are there but the initial consonant is missing. And spoonerisms happen like pasgetti for spaghetti, because children will simplify the sounds so that they can say them and eventually they are able to assimilate the adult forms of the language in their speech as they mature.

I agree with you that they are connected but I just wanted to clarify for the people who are reading this so that they understand what SLP’s mean when they describe phonological and articulation processes and the differences between them. Even beginning clinicians and teachers get these confused. I just happen to know more about CAPD because I have it, I have done papers on it and I have done a practicum with an audiologist who does CAPD assessments.

Ooooh, good. Maybe you can help me then. I don’t understand this…. my daughter passed the screening for APD in a aound proof booth done by an audiologists. The audiologist said she passed everything so well, that she is certain my child doen not have APD. Is this the end all test for APD?? Can you pass teh sound proof booth tests, but still have APD?

I glanced through the book “When the Brain Can’t Hear” and didn’t think my son fit into the CAPD category, but he definitely has a “hearing” problem. Your post about the connection between SI and CAPD may explain this. Thanks for pointing out this connection! I’ve read other information you’ve shared about SI and have learned quite a lot from your posts.

And then it get’s all so confusing when,it is utterly quiet,except one sound. I,like m son,can go nuts with this scenario too. In his SLP eval,the only noise in the room was the wall clock that made this annoying sound everytime the hand moved. My son,told the SLP,I can’t hear you,the clock is ticking. The SLP was floored. I too,can have a hard time processing what someone is saying if I allow myself to focus in on one annoying noise!

And let’s not forget,there is no med. for it. Like dyslexia,which takes remediation,possibly years of it,with painfully slow progress,it is ever so much easier to say we don’t “do” CAPD,or Dyslexia. For that matter visual processing is another one,they don’t “do”.

I never even thought of that. Even though the school psycologist and speech.lang pathologist said several times that my son showed definite signs of APD, the room was completely empty most of the time. At one point there were other children in the room but they were on the other side of the room. My son behind a petition wall and lots of other things, bookcases, file cabinets, etc.

That never dawned on me. I knew the speech and lang eval was pretty inaccurate to begin with because she kept giving my son extra chances to come up with the wrong answer but now I wonder how valid it was at all?

Wow, that gives me lots to think about!

K.

What were the tests that were done? Were ones done with background noise? If she passed all of the tests then she probably doesn’t have CAPD, it could be more of an attention issue or a phonological processing issue. Does she hear you when you are calling for her from another room? Can she answer reply appropriately when she isn’t looking at you?

It is very sad to hear that this teacher doesn’t think CAPD exists. I have also seen similar behavior on the part of school administrators and it is frustrating and disappointing. It is difficult for some to believe a child with CAPD can still do well on standardized tests and get A’s. It doesn’t mean they don’t have an LD, in fact, it must require amazingly hard work to achieve good grades. I think it will always be a struggle to get others to recognize CAPD - how easy it is to say a child is not paying attention or is lazy. Perhaps it’s time for school SLP to start educating teachers on the types of LDs that are out there.

Cheryl, are CAPD and APD the same?

Good question, don’t know. I think its one of those things where professionals use the terms interchangeably and then it actually isn’t known. PAD can be diagnosed by a speech therapist but CAPD would require an audiologist, that might be the main difference. APD is to me difficulty with auditory discrimination of sounds, difficulty with phonemeic awareness, trouble with auditory memory and auditory sequencing regardless of noise. CAPD is more complex and can include APD and usually does but involves more stuff.

Intersestingly many (school) SLPs don’t believe it exists either.

Cheryl, your right about that!
I requested the public school to evaluate for language therapy after I submitted a private eval. stating my son had CAPD and SID. I will never forget the phone call from the SLP. She was about 20 years old right out of college. She proceeded to tell me her professor in school was adament that CAPD didn’t exist. Of course this was a precursor to her not wanting to do the eval,and in the end,lo and behold he didn’t meet criteria. When she told me this I kind of chuckled,said,ahhh,and what else did he tell you? I suppose ADHD,LD doesn’t exist either? Has someone told the kids??,because I don’t think they know this..

They measured Pure Tone Thresholds, Speech Reception Thresholds, Word Recognition Scores,Auditory Figure Ground, Audiotry Maturatoin- Binaural Intergration and BinauralSeparation, and Auditory Closure. The professionals who have evaluated her all feel that her attention skills are very good. Of course, when it is a task that is difficult for her she fidgets a bit. How does auditory memory come into play? That is different from APD?

People use their auditory memory all the time, and is related to words, how they sound and what they mean. So for instance, if you hear someone talking about plants you have a memory for words that are associated with plants. If you miss part of the conversation you are able to use your auditory memory to fill in the blanks that you missed so that you get the gestalt of the conversation. However many children have weak auditory memories and do not have the necessary background knowledge to fill in for the pieces of conversation that they are missing.

So perhaps she has difficulty with language and needs to have speech therapy to help her with her difficulties in word retrieval. Just because a child appears has the necessary pragmatic skills to appear to be attending to a conversation doesn’t mean that they aren’t thinking about something else in their mind. Incidently, the one battery that tests her ability to attend to auditory information wasn’t done…It is called an Auditory Continuous Performance test.

So, it sounds like APD is milder than CAPD? I just keep hearing CAPD, but not APD as much and my daughter was diagnosed APD with a host of other LD’s. So, APD, in & of itself is not considered a sld?.

It depends on your school district to be honest. DO I consider it a LD? Yes, as much as I would consider any type of speech disorder an LD, it is one but isn’t often thought of as one. Is it milder? Not necessarily, one could have severe APD or mild CAPD. It is a sub type of CAPD I think, it would fall under CAPD umbrella. A speech therapist can diagnose it, one can only suggest CAPD. Most therapists don’t refer to CAPD at all, just APD. If your daughter has trouble in noise I would highly recommend having an audiologist test her. FYI: most school districts won’t do that testing for you.

Cheryl, I agree with you!! My sons SLP felt threatened by my knowledge of CAPD and said “from her observations, he does not have it”. At a recent IEP meeting (where i have been fighting to have him tested) she questioned me on why i would want to “put another label on him?”. I’m not sure i want this woman as my sons SLP anymore! The good news is, they have agreed to test him, and sent all his paperwork to T. Bellis (author of a wonderful book “When the Brain Can’t Hear”) and he is scheduled to be tested Aug. 6th at Northwestern Univ. I couldn’t have gotten this far without the wonderful help i recieve on these boards!! Sue

I have questions regarding CAPD. My son is almost 13 years old and since he was in 2nd grade we have taken him to different specialists to determine what might be going on with him. So far, his teachers all say he is very bright and understands the material covered but he cannot get his work done in school. A paper that should take 20 min. will take him 2 hours to complete. He brings home so much school work that he does this work from 3:30 until 10:00 at night and even then sometimes he is not done. We had him checked for ADD, petit mal seisures, he has seen a neurologist, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist. The psychologist thought he had Asberger’s, but then he didn’t fit that totally. The psychiatrist has put him on Zoloff, and Adderall both of which have done nothing. The teachers, the school counselors, and the psychiatrist are at a loss as to what is going on with him. An article on this web site seemed to describe my son pretty acurately, at least enough that I need to find out more information. It was a secondary CAPD subprofile, Output-Organization Deficit. I need to know what type of professional do I take him to to find out if this is what he has. I would appreciate any help and information regarding this. Thanks.

I am not sure exactly what, Output-Organization Deficit is, but if it is related to CAPD, have you taken your son to an audiologist qualified to test for CAPD?

http://www.angelfire.com/bc2/capd5/

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/process_deficit/table_deficits.html

http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/capd-rf1.html <–– this site has a link to find
a qualified audiologist.

Cut and past those websites and hopefully they will help!!
Hope this helps!!

K.

K is right. You need an audiologist to diagnose. You might look at Terri Bellis’ book When the Brain Can’t Hear-Understanding Auditory Processing Disorders.
She describes Output-Organization deficit.

Also realize that there are different models of CAPD. They are basically different ways of organizing the same information but some models seem to fit some kids better than others. Not all include Output-Organization deficit. You might want to ask what model the audiologist is using before taking your child in for an evaluation.

Beth

CAPD is the older term. Supposedly audiologists have moved to using APD. The problem is other professionals, like speech and language therapists, use APD to mean other things. Personally, I prefer CAPD because it is a more distinct label.

Beth

Kim,
You ought to re-post this using “New Topic” on the menu. I’ll bet you get dozens of replies. I’m afraid that it will go largely unnoticed on the long and aging thread that it’s on.

CAPD is largely a language issue. If what you describe is an offshoot of CAPD, then a speech and language clinic is a good place to start.

We’ve had good luck with the local university’s speech and language program, although the waiting lists are usually quite long. Also Scottish Rites clinics are excellent, probably better, but not as widespread. You can go to the following address that has a directory of clinics in every state: http://www.mn-mason.org/language.html.

Good luck.

PS Your son’s tenacity about his homework is impressive! My son, who is also almost thirteen, breaks down after about an hour. When you do find the right methods of education, his perseverance will be such a wonderful asset.