Getting ready for a neuro/psych test at the Med. Center…Have been going through all the material the school provided after their testing and came across a speech-language evaluation form that had been shoved to the back of the packet of materials. Apparently, the school decided to conduct Language Skills evaluation..As it was sated in the initial repaort…”At the conclusion of the academic and ability testing, it ws noted that mary appeared to be having difficulties with language and auditory procesing and she was referred for a language evaluation.” She was given the Peabody Picture Bocabulary test-IIIA. She recieved a standard score of 103 on the GFTA-2 placing her in the 43rd percentile. However she obtained somewhat mixed results on the language testing. Her receptive vocabulary is within the average range as is her score on the Listening Test (score of 86), however she performed below average on the Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills-Revised TAPR-R). Overall score 70. Subteats revealed difficulties with Auditory Number Memory and Auditory Sentence memory….Does anyone know of any great sites that will help me understand what these scores mean and how they may or may not impact the rest of her learning……How do these auditory problems impact how she learns and how the parents and school can help?? In the Concllusion section of the schools evaluation report the psycologist reports that she has deficits in the area of memory and visual perception….and now the language pathologist has suggested that she also has auditory processing problems……BUT she has an average IQ….is performing at the kindergarten level, and is 8 yrs old and is at the end of second grade. The school has already stated that they do not believe in retention and that she will be passed on to third grade…YIPES!!!! My basic question is…do these auditory, memory and visual perception problems have any effect on the outcome of the testing…Woodcock or Wechsler Intelligence….Or perhaps none of them are related. Any insight is apppreciated.
Re: Test of Auditory Perception Skills
The TAPS-R alone is not enough to diagnose an auditory processing disorder. Where she is struggling could also be in her ability to focus and recite (memory recall) information that is given to her auditorially, which is what this subtest of the TAPS-R does. They start out simple like this.. This is just a made up example and not the actual item given on the test..3 words…The cat runs.
4 words…The glass is full. 5 words Diamonds and emeralds are stones. and so on until the child makes errors in 2 consecutive sentences..
The final sentence has 10 words in order. The grey cat jumped over the fence catching a mouse.
Auditory Number Memory she is given numbers in order and has to repeat them verbatim. Some children try to add them and not subtract them. For instance if I said 7, 8 the child would have to say 7, 8. This basically tests their auditory digit span up to 8. digits in order. The ceiling is not being able to do two in a row. Depending on which subscales were done they could have also done auditory number reverse which means she would have to listen to two numbers and reverse their order. This is a much harder task to acheive.
They also gave her the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA-2) which placed her in the average range. It is hard to say what is going on without a complete psycho-educational battery, an audiological evaluation for CAPD with a continuous performance test done both auditorialy and visually to rule out ADD/CAPD. The type of errors that she makes on the CAPD Continuous performance test will show if the problems are auditorially related or attention related. Also looking at the processing speed of the psyche testing will help finalize the diagnosis becuase if it is low 70 or lower she may have ADD. There is a high co-morbidity between auditory processing issues and ADD but one can occur without the other and in my experience they can both co-exist which makes learning language even more difficult
Hope this helps you..
My son, now 15, has serious auditory processing issues. He scored very low in many areas of an extensive auditory processing evaluation. For example, when the tester was talking about an eraser, he was talking about a race car. How could it not affect his Woodcock or Wechsler?
You may wish to have your daughter fully evaluated. for some significant insights.