Auditory memory

Stephanie,

My child has the same problem. I am researching some things on that topic right now. One thing that I know of that specifically targets auditory sequential memory is called BrainBuilder. I have heard it is boring, but I don’t see much of a way to make learning series of numbers interesting.

http://www.advancedbrain.com/bb_intro.html

I agree that memory problems are challenging.

Janis

Keep us informed. My child has the same problem. I found my child counting on his fingers during the Earobics exercises to remember how may sounds were presented. Great compensating, but it sure doesn’t help remediate the problem.

I have Mel Levine’s book, All Kinds of Minds, and How to Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence and both have chapters on memory. I’ll try to remember to report back after I read them! ;-)

I think schools rarely work on underlying issues. So it takes some research to figure out what to do. I have been told that you need to teach strategies such as categorization to increase the number of items retained. But that won’t work in every instance that memory is needed. I may have said this above, but my child is having difficulty with reading comprehension. And this spells BIG trouble in regard to our state testing. I think Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing strategies would help, too.

Janis

I have Earobics and Brainbuilder. Brainbuilder allows you to control how fast the numbers are said, which allows a bit more of an incremental approach than Earobics. But my general feeling is Brainbuilder won’t help if Earobics has not. The biggest problem I have faced with my child is that he often isn’t capable of progressing adequately in a program.

What I have learned from my experiences is that you have to try a different approach rather than more of the same. Some children, for example, are able to progress in Earobics after doing Fast Forward. My child was one of these. I would not recommend doing Fastforward for memory alone though—it is too difficult and too expensive. I have another friend whose daughter’s memory improved through doing The Listening Program. They had done much memory work but found she kept hitting a wall. We did TLP but can’t say we saw any memory improvements (but we had already done FFW) but did see improved ability to learn auditorally. My child, who could not manipulate sounds despite months of intensive instruction, could suddenly be taught to manipulate sounds.

So my two cents would be to try The Listening Program—it might help your child get through that wall. You might need to follow TLP up with either Earobics or Brainbuilder but your child is likely to be more teachable. You notice I say “might” “likely”—I don’t think there are any guarantees with these kinds of programs but hitting your head against the wall doing the same thing certainly isn’t helping.

Beth

Something as simple as nursery rhymes and child fingerplays like Miss lucy Mack, etc…I have found if you slow them down and have the child look at you and mouth along and eventually you can program their auditory memory…It just needs to be SLOOOWED way down for them to pick it up kind of like Fast Forword but in real time…

I have had a lot of fun and success using this approach with kids who have week auditory memory…Books on tape are good too…remember I am hearing impaired but I have a decent auditory memory…I wasn’t born with it…I worked at it…and this work has paid off..for me and my daughter..

Hi, Patti,

It’s interesting that you bring this up. This is how I knew Anna had a language delay. She could not recite little songs and poems like other pre-school kids could. The ones she now knows were learned after many, many repetitions. I actually bought a specially produced CD of slowed down children’s songs for her. She is not wild about it and prefers others, but here is the link for anyone interested (ages 2-8):

http://www.pittsburghsymphony.org/time2sing.html

Janis

We have a whole new matrix for accomodations on state testing. One is to permit the child to highlight key words and points in the test booklet. I have added this accomodation to several IEPs recently because we teach the kids to read the passage and question and to go back and look for the sentence that answers the question. Some of our teachers require that the kids underline and write the question number so they are building this habit. This should help at least with literal comprehension questions. In my experience, they work inattentively and don’t use strategies, so they often do miss these relatively easy literal questions.

V/V helped my sons’ auditory memory quite a bit. After v/v, he started singing songs and repeating dialogue. It gave him mental “glue”. He is still far from perfect but he definitely listens better and it gave him a base to build on.

Rand, that is wonderful to hear about V/V! I am planning for my child to have training in it.

Janis