Question-Janice C. CAPD follow up

I am doing a practicum with an audiologist who specializes in CAPD testing…The Audiologist does testing on CAPD and then follows through with a complete report and recommendations. One test that you did not mention is the Auditory Continuous Performance Test by Robert Keith. A subject is given a list of 96 words in succession one by one and they are supposed to listen for the word Dog, and every time they hear the word dog they are supposed to raise their hand. This tests how well they can pay attention for 20 minutes and discriminate the word dog from all the other words.

The phonemic Synthesis test is where a child is given a word slowly, one phoneme at a time and they have to hold it in their auditory memory and then tell you what it is. One caution is that kids with ADD will also score low on both of these tests as they take a looong time and they lose their patience and get bored with it. I did the Phonemic Synthesis test on my daughter on Friday and she Bombed it, it was at the end of the day and her meds were wearing off. She kept saying this is BORING and kept talking inbetween the list of words. She has CAPD/ADHD on top of a moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. The Staggered spondaic word test you mentioned is a standard test for word discrimination that is used for by audiologists on people before and after they have been fit with hearing aids.

Some recommendations that are good for children with CAPD are having an assistive listening device, being in the front of the room, doing Earobics or Fast ForWord. Having an SLP work on concepts including listening skills, understanding and following through with directions, work on developing their auditory memory, etc..

Hi Sue and Patti,

Actually Anna scored within normal limits on the Phonemic Synthesis test. I think it was only three phonemes given which was not too difficult. She really bombs with more than three items. The only area of the SCAN-C that she scored very low on (3 std. score) was competing words. She scored between 8 and 11 on the other 3 areas.

Sue, to answer your question, what you get in a report will vary depending on the background of your audiologist. We had a PhD. audiologist who specializes in APD at a major university. I feel we had excellent quality testing. Every test is explained in the report and then she says what profile (Florida model) the child’s problems fit. In the case of my child, her symptoms (test results) really did not fit any of the profiles well. She had a couple of problems in every area but not the majority of those in any area. The recommendations were somewhat general. SO… I sent all her test results: APD, IQ, educational, and speech/language to a specialist in Washington, DC who made sense of the whole thing. His model of APD is a little different, and I could see Anna’s problems better in his model. He is also a SLP and has a doctorate in education, so he can put the pieces together and tell you what to do about it. That report cost about $200, but it was really worth it.

The things Patti mentioned are often recommended for kids with APD. I will say, though, that the audiologist in Washington is very adamant that those things are NOT appropriate for ALL kids with APD. He is very particular about who he recommends Fast ForWord for as he knows the type profile it will help. He also dislikes the FM system recommendation as he believes remediation is more important.

The first intervention besides language therapy will be PhonoGraphix to strengthen her phonics skills. She has been in Saxon Phonics which is strong but just does not practice each new pattern enough before they move on. She knows all the consonants and short vowels pretty well, but she hates blending more than three sounds. I think her working memory is poor and that makes it hard for her to retain all the sounds.

He recommended some things relating to breaking down tasks into steps so that she can understand better. It has to do with integration. He said she knows enough of the basic phonemes that she does not need the whole LiPS program, but she would benefit from something like Seeing Stars or another program that will build on her phonics knowledge. She definitely needs Visualizing and Verbalizing once we get her reading improved. Her comprehension is not good (reading or listening). He did recommend Fast ForWord to help with the integration problems. He also explained in a post today about how to go about helping working memory.

The main problem is that she is only in first grade, and it is very difficult to tell just how much this is going to cause her problems. If the PhonoGraphix doesn’t solve the phonics gaps, then we will either go to Lindamood-Bell or an Orton-Gillingham program. I haven’t yet decided on those but need to quickly as the time to sign up for training will be soon. My only hesitation is that written language is bound to be a problem and Lindamood-Bell doesn’t do a lot for that..

Honestly, if you live anywhere near Washington, DC, I’d just go to the audiologist I’m talking about. It would have been a lot simpler!

Janis

Janis,

Who is the Washington DC audiologist? We are in the DC area and are looking for someone good who knows about APD. Thanks!

Sally,

You are very fortunate! Here is Dr. Lucker’s contact info:

Jay R. Lucker, Ed.D., CCC-A/SLP,
FAAA
Certified/Licensed Audiologist
Certified/Licensed Speech-Language
Pathologist
Specializing in Auditory Processing
4601 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite #2
Washington, DC 20008

email: [email protected]

Offices
Washington, DC (202-237-2927
voicemail box #8)
Alexandria, VA (703-548-0721)
Mineola, NY (516-741-5141 speak
with Carmela)

Janis

Where were all you wonderful people in the DC area last year when I was there offering tutoring? You all show up now I’ve moved on!