Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

[Timothy Gangwer]

Picture Cards

AUGUST 19, 2011 BY KIDSPLORERS LEAVE A COMMENT

One way to assist a child who has auditory processing difficulties is with visual aids such as picture cards. This is a great way to explain rules or a procedure, write a list, and even make a schedule that your child can refer to. Many children with Aspergers learn visually, and visual aids may help them remember instructions or plans.

You can make your own picture cards or boards, using photos or clip art. Website Do 2 Learn has a very good selection of pictures that you can use, under categories such as home & school, safety, activities, emotions etc. You can download the line drawings for free and your child can colour them in themselves, or you can purchase the colour versions. The images are available as small pictures, a few per page, to print and use on a picture board orreminder strips or as large pictures, one per page, with or without text. They even have a “Make your own Schedule” program.

Below is a Road Safety Picture Board that I created for my son, using pictures from Do2Learn. I created a table in MS Word, copied and pasted the pictures in – one per table cell, resized them to fit, and then added my own text.

 

 

Do 2 Learn  gives tips for making your own picture cards, and also gives some advice for making your own photo cards “When taking photographs to use for communication, it is helpful to make the photograph as simple as possible. Include only one object in the picture or make the background blank. Some individuals have difficulty generalizing, so it may also be helpful to avoid including details such as the title of the book or video, or the labels on a food or drink item”.

 

FILED UNDER ARTICLES, COMMUNICATION, PERSONAL REFLECTIONS, ROAD SAFETY, ROAD SAFETY, THINKING STYLES, VISUAL LEARNING TAGGED WITH ASPERGERS, AUTISM, COMMUNICATION, DIFFICULTY, SAFETY, SOCIAL STORIES, THINKING STYLES, VISUAL THINKING

Strategies for helping with Auditory Processing Disorder

AUGUST 18, 2011 BY KIDSPLORERS 1 COMMENT

Reposted from http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/ears/central_auditory.html#

“Strategies applied at home and school can ease some of the problem behaviors associated with APD. Because it’s common for kids with CAPD to have difficulty following directions, for example, these tactics might help:

• Since most kids with APD have difficulty hearing amid noise, it’s very important to reduce the background noise at home and at school.
• Have your child look at you when you’re speaking.
• Use simple, expressive sentences.
• Speak at a slightly slower rate and at a mildly increased volume.
• Ask your child to repeat the directions back to you and to keep repeating them aloud (to you or to himself or herself) until the directions are completed.
• For directions that are to be completed at a later time, writing notes, wearing a watch, and maintaining a household routine also help. General organization and scheduling also can be beneficial.

It’s especially important to teach your child to notice noisy environments, for example, and move to quieter places when listening is necessary.

Other strategies that might help:

• Provide your child with a quiet study place (not the kitchen table).
• Maintain a peaceful, organized lifestyle.
• Encourage good eating and sleeping habits.
• Assign regular and realistic chores, including keeping a neat room and desk.
• Build your child’s self-esteem.

Be sure to keep in regular contact with school officials about your child’s progress. Kids with APD aren’t typically put in special education programs. Instead, teachers can make it easier by:

• altering seating plans so the child can sit in the front of the room or with his or her back to the window
• providing additional aids for study, like an assignment pad or a tape recorder

One of the most important things that both parents and teachers can do is to acknowledge that CAPD is real. Symptoms and behaviors are not within the child’s control. What is within the child’s control is recognizing the problems associated with APD and applying the strategies recommended both at home and school.

A positive, realistic attitude and healthy self-esteem in a child with APD can work wonders. And kids with APD can go on to be just as successful as other classmates. Although some children do grow up to be adults with APD, by using coping strategies as well as techniques learned in speech therapy, they can be very successful adults.”

FILED UNDER ARTICLES, AUDITORY PROCESSING, COMMUNICATION, SENSORY OVERLOAD, VISUAL LEARNINGTAGGED WITH APD, ASPERGERS, AUDITORY, AUDITORY PROCESSING, AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER,AUTISM, COMMUNICATION, DIFFICULTY, HYPERACUSIS, OVERSENSITIVE, SENSORY OVERLOAD

Auditory Processing Disorder

AUGUST 18, 2011 BY KIDSPLORERS LEAVE A COMMENT

CUTE TODDLER © Beatricekillam | Dreamstime.com

Many people with Aspergers have difficulty with auditory processing, including myself. A child may appear not to hear parts of a conversation or remember instructions, or they may seem to be ignoring someone talking, even if they are close by. They may appear deaf – but this is nothing to do with hearing, and the child may indeed have normal, or even more sensitive than normal, hearing. Difficulties with auditory processing stem from a malfunction in the transfer of audio signals from the ear to the brain. The Listen and Learn Centre in Melbourne define APD as “a problem in the decoding of language”.

www.auditoryprocessing.com.au  defines APD as follows:

“People who have normal hearing actually hear far more than they perceive. Where hearing is a function of the ear, auditory processing – listening – is a function of the brain. Auditory processing describes the way the brain assigns significance and meaning to the sounds in the environment. Effective auditory processing involves a relatively high speed of information transfer. It also requires a good attention span, a well-functioning memory, and sensitivity to the many subtleties of sound. When parts of this complex system break down or don’t operate efficiently, listening is compromised. All the ensuing problems are collectively known as Auditory Processing Disorders (APD).”

It can mean the child doesn’t always register speech, or that they sometimes misunderstand or misremember something that is being said. It can adversely affect their memory of oral information, which can cause frustration as the child is convinced they have remembered something right when it is wrong, or they may have no glimmer of recollection of something they have been told.

APD affects around 5% of school-aged children, and is often worse in loud environments, for instance at school, as the child has difficulty differentiating what is being said from the background noise. This can lead to difficulties with their schoolwork, and their grades may suffer as a result.

The Listen and Learn Centre also note that APD can lead to the “deterioration of behaviour as a result of poor expressive and receptive communication. As children experience the discouragement of being misunderstood and the frustration of misunderstanding others, they become more disconnected from their environment and the people around them”. The child may learn coping strategies such as lip-reading, but this doesn’t always help them in all cases. It could also be the reason why some people with Aspergers may not be able to detect humour. The Neurosensory Unit has this to say:

“It [the central auditory system] helps us to identify the non-linguistic elements of speech and communication, such as rhythm, timing and pitch that assist in interpreting humour and sarcasm, as well as intent of communication.”

APD can be another reason, in addition to sensory overload, that can cause a child to withdraw from social situations. In fact, it seems that sensory overload can also occur with APD, according to the Listen and Learn Centre:

“The term ‘auditory overload’ is often used to describe what happens to people who have APD. Auditory overload is a sense of being overwhelmed and relates to features of the information being received. If information is highly specific, spoken quickly, lacking in contextual cues, described in unfamiliar language or presented in a noisy environment, it will be very difficult for someone with APD to comprehend the message or follow through with instructions.”

Some children with APD may be seem to have very sensitive hearing, and could hear a pin drop in a quiet room. The team at the Listen and Learn Centre have a theory about this:

“Some children are more attentive to bone conducted sounds. They primarily listen with their body instead of with their ears. These individuals have difficulties in dampening the sound intensity and to filter out irrelevant sounds. This may be one of the reasons why individuals are hyper sensitive to sound as they may have lost the ability to focus and tune out extraneous background noise. In this situation, every noise has the same amount of importance. Capturing a word may be difficult as ambient noise distracts from focusing. As a result, the child misses part of the conversation or instruction being given.”

There is no relationship between intelligence and APD; a very bright child may be having difficulty at school and poor marks, which could puzzle parents or teachers.

In this case changes to the teaching style could help, with more emphasis on visual learning strategies.