Researching Auditory Processing Disorder

[Sweetpeach]

Hello Hivers,

Let me start by saying anything I know about hs'ing, I gleaned from these boards.

 

A few weeks ago, I read a spelling thread . . . an 11 year old who couldn't spell himself out of a wet paper bag. I went on a morpheme research binge which brought me to the Dixon spelling program and linked me to a couple books, one of which was Karen Foli's Like Sound Through Water.

 

I have a 10 year old who can't spell but now, I'm wondering if he can't hear phonological distinctions. We use AAS, in tandem with SWR. Even with all the spelling work we've done, he periodically struggles with basic cvc words, still can't hear the difference between short e and short i, gets tangled up c_ce words.

 

Reading Foli's book . . . "I learned a new way of learning, or regrouping the alphabet into sensory ways of feeling and hearing, and finally linking to a visual symbol. The first consonant pair we learned was the "p/b" pair or Lip Poppers."

 

t/d - tip tappers

k/g - tongue scrapers

th/th - tongue coolers

 

Eight groups like this and eight more that were grouped by similarities l/r - lifters.

 

She goes on to say that the "vowel sounds were arranged in a circle that corresponded to how the mouth looked when making the sound, like smiling, open, round."

 

What really caught my attention was her description of short e and short i being particularly difficult to master; short e has a much more open mouth than short i. ie: ben / bin. Our mouth does open wider to say Ben then it does to say bin.

 

Who knows something about this? She links to a site http://www.lblp.com --- Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes.

 

My interest is perked because to date, I've had no success with teaching my boy to spell. He tests at grade level across the board, except for spelling. His writing is atrocious. I need to figure out a plan of attack.

 

Thanks for any bones you might throw my way.

Tricia

[Hen]

I am homeschooling a friend's boy who has auditory processing disorder. We really had no idea, but red flags that he wasn't learning to read and his speech is a bit funny.

 

The public school did the testing, it was pretty thorough.

A book that really helped me understand it is When the Brain can't Hear.

[Sweetpeach]

Hi HenJen,

I have the book you recommended on hold at the library. I did more googling and found some more interesting bits that might help us distinguish sounds.

Thanks for your rec!

T

[FordFamily]

Hello

There is a world famous Dr./Therapist in Kansas City. I assume if you googled Auditory Proc. Dis. his name, clinic might appear.

A friend of mine has a child that is getting help there. Sorry, I don't remember his name.

I also think that the book Out of Sync Child might give some insight, it might deal with more SI than APD but, it might be of some use.

[LizzyBee]

She is describing Lindamood Bell Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS). LB clinics are very expensive, but you can actually buy the clinical kits of their curriculum and use them at home. To see if LiPS might be something that would benefit your son, give him the free student screening at http://www.bartonreading.com.

 

Two of my kids have auditory processing disorder. It is diagnosed by an audiologist who has specialized training.

[Colleen in NS]

Reading Foli's book . . . "I learned a new way of learning, or regrouping the alphabet into sensory ways of feeling and hearing, and finally linking to a visual symbol. The first consonant pair we learned was the "p/b" pair or Lip Poppers."

 

t/d - tip tappers

k/g - tongue scrapers

th/th - tongue coolers

 

Eight groups like this and eight more that were grouped by similarities l/r - lifters.

 

Tricia, this is very interesting stuff! And the part about the mouth forming differently for different sounds. The WRTR training that my Mom had talked about this a lot, though I can't remember if it's actually in the book or on the flashcards....sounds like you have a lot more detailed info. here. Anyway, this is interesting to me. I hope you find the "key" for D. I'm sure you will.

 

What really caught my attention was her description of short e and short i being particularly difficult to master; short e has a much more open mouth than short i. ie: ben / bin. Our mouth does open wider to say Ben then it does to say bin.

 

OK, now *this* caught *my* attention. I have found since moving to NS, that this is very common in this region - ever notice how Larry says Ginny's name during church announcements? He says "Genny." For the longest time, I couldn't figure out what her name was, because he said it differently than I would have pronounced it from the spelling on the phone list! :lol: And some people here say "Laygo" instead of "Lego." Nothing wrong with it, it's just regional. But yeah, for spelling, it's important to learn the difference. I can see now from what you wrote, that it's actually easier to open the mouth wider for short e, than to form the mouth more narrowly for the short i. Definitely something to emphasize and work on during spelling lessons. Let me know more interesting tidbits when you find them - my younger has a harder time with spelling than my older. I definitely have to pay more attention to details during our WRTR lessons. Good luck!

[Sweetpeach]

Thank you, FordFamily, for the book rec. I'm going to spend some time digging, reading, googling . . . if I can't teach this boy to spell, I could potentially blow a gasket and make myself crazy!

T

[Sweetpeach]

Hi there, Colleen,

 

Would you have a little peek into your WRTR text and see if anything jogs you? I don't think this tongue position/closed-open-smiling lips is rocket science to understand but I've certainly never given it any thought until reading the book. I need to find the charts online, print them and play with the different sounds. It could be that Daws needs to see my lips, and hear the sound, repeat the sound while thinking about what shape his lips are making -- as an additional spelling clue.

 

He reads so much more now than he did last year, and I was hoping that the extra reading would somehow translate into his spelling. Still, his spelling inventions enthrall me . . . we have the AAS phonograms and he works them everyday, and yet asking him to spell a word out of the blue ?!?!?!?! It's like the spelling switch turns off.

 

A summer of research won't kill me.

 

Love, T

[Colleen in NS]

Hi there, Colleen,

 

Would you have a little peek into your WRTR text and see if anything jogs you? I don't think this tongue position/closed-open-smiling lips is rocket science to understand but I've certainly never given it any thought until reading the book. I need to find the charts online, print them and play with the different sounds. It could be that Daws needs to see my lips, and hear the sound, repeat the sound while thinking about what shape his lips are making -- as an additional spelling clue.

 

He reads so much more now than he did last year, and I was hoping that the extra reading would somehow translate into his spelling. Still, his spelling inventions enthrall me . . . we have the AAS phonograms and he works them everyday, and yet asking him to spell a word out of the blue ?!?!?!?! It's like the spelling switch turns off.

 

A summer of research won't kill me.

 

Love, T

 

OK, I had a look at the book and at my phonogram cards. The cards have the pronunciation info. on them, but I'm not sure it will be enough for what you seem to be looking for. If you want to have a look, let me know. There is *some* guidance on how to form lips, where the tongue should go, dropping the jaw, resonating from the vocal cords, etc.. But I'll bet there is more guidance out there somewhere - speech therapy book at the library, maybe? But do let me know if you want to look at my cards on Sunday.

 

Another idea: you and D sit in front of a mirror together, you demonstrate, and let him copy you, in front of the mirror, so he can compare and adjust himself to you right away.

 

I think reading proficiency usually comes before spelling proficiency - they are mirror skills of each other, but learning to read is usually easier. I am holding onto SWB's words from last year's conf. that it's OK for spelling to not solidify until sometime in the middle grades. Dd has definitely improved in spelling over the past couple of years, but yeah, outside of spelling lessons can be interesting! I just keep plugging away at it, grateful for every improvement (I also need to have another go-round of memorizing phonograms again with her).

 

EDIT: oops, I just saw that you found charts online to help with mouth formation. Yeah, it probably isn't rocket science. Hopefully you won't need a whole summer of research. I think it *would* kill you! :lol:

[Rosyl]

thanks for starting this thread. I stumbled on Karen Foli's book and have been processing it, searching CAPD on the forums and trying to find ways to apply teaching.

 

 

LiPS seems to come up alot, I was trying to start with the easy things to implement before I bought a full fledged program.

 

 

We use AAS, I read audio books for ds to listen to are helpful and I have tried to slow down my speech and have him recite back to me what I have spoken for understanding.

 

Is WRTR writing road to reading?

 

I have an 11 year old ds and a 9 year old ds and my head is about to pop off for spelling, too.

[Colleen in NS]

Is WRTR writing road to reading?

 

 

 

Yes, it is.

 

And Tricia, I just thought of something else - you might want to post a link to this thread on the Special Needs board - you'd probably gets lots more experienced help from there, too.

[PeterPan]

Tricia, just for your trivia, the things LB is talking about there are called voice/voiceless pairs, terms they use in linguistics, etc. Indeed, the vowels (not only american vowels, but also those of other languages) are placed into a chart roughly looking like a tic-tac-toe board (hence her illustration as a circle) that corresponds to the location in the mouth where each sound is formed and their inherent relations as sounds. Not only is there location, but the shape of the tongue during formation creates "phonemic difference," a fancy way of saying it changes the meaning. So an /sh/ can be formed with the tongue in three different locations and have three different sounds, all of which are basically /sh/ but technically different enough to create meaning distinction in some languages.

 

I had heard of the LB stuff and didn't realize what she was doing. That's a wonderful thing to bring these concepts down to where anyone can read and use them! I was going to suggest the Barton test on phonemic awareness, but somebody already beat me to it. That's as far as I know. My dd did fine on that test, mercifully, so it was the end of that line of research. I mainly just wanted to toss out that bit on the linguistics side, in case it interested you. :)

[ElizabethB]

Here are some things that may help, or may just be interesting research!

 

I like this website, it has pictures and movies of sounds being made:

 

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

 

Also, you can try my phonics lessons, they have markings for different sounds and explain voiced and unvoiced pairs like d/t, f/v and th/th (Yes, th has 2 sounds!) and may be helpful (they have everything in my spelling lessons, but move much slower, someone having extreme spelling trouble should watch the slower phonics movies, not the quick overview spelling movies.)

 

e/i thoughts:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156270&highlight=don+potter+pen+pin

 

Cued speech and deaf people learning phonics:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152832&highlight=alexander+bell

 

Here is another post that might have some good research links for you:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1191907&postcount=20

 

You might also want to look at some of the things on my dyslexia page.

 

And, if he is good at math, I recommend my chart for spelling, my struggling students who are good at math find it helpful:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonogramsoundch.html

 

I don't really directly work on my students spelling, I work on their reading with a bit of spelling, dump spelling resources on their parents, and then move. (We have moved 6 times in the last 8 years and are moving again this summer.) Many do keep in touch with me, and spelling does seem to eventually come along for most students, but it does lag their reading remediation.

Edited April 30, 2010 by ElizabethB

[LittleHouseHomeschool]

Auditory processing disorders are quite complex and can involve more than one auditory issue. There isn't a single treatment that helps all issues...and the affects the disorder has on a child's academic life can be profound. You may not be seeing a full display of your child's symptoms. As information becomes more abstract, children with auditory processing issues often experience an academic flatline.

 

My son has two auditory processing deficits. (Which is very common...when you have one, there is a higher likelihood that there are two or more.)

 

My son has a problem decoding the information he hears while filtering out background noise. So he needs a longer time to hear, process and understand.

 

But he also has a fading tolerance memory (short term memory). This means he cannot hold onto information for very long (even seconds).

 

It takes him a longer amount of time to understand what is being said, but he can't afford the time he needs because he forgets what he has heard. What a conundrum for this precious child!

 

My son requires speech and hearing therapy to help him overcome his isues. Treatment often requires the child learn how to accommodate for his deficits AND participate in remedial type therapies to strengthen weaknesses.

 

If you suspect your child has an auditory processing issue, I would recommend that you not try to figure this out on your own. Without specific test results, treating APD is like shooting at a target in a dark room. You might hit on one issue but miss another. You might consider talking to your pediatrician about a referral to an audiologist. A consult with a professional and solid test results will give you the confidence and peace in knowing you have covered all the bases and are doing everything possible to assist your child in reaching his full potential.

[amylarimer]

I really enjoyed Karen Foli's book too. It explained so much about my child. We are looking into Barton for him. I don't think that he is need a LiPS.

Happy Homeschooling!

Amy

[siloam]

Tricia,

 

What you are learning sounds straight out of LiPS other than LiPS has the child discover the sounds themselves and allows them to develop their own labels if they prefer. The focus is on how the mouth FEELS when it makes the sound, also on having them watch your mouth for visual clues.

 

This program provides great tools for the child who can't spell. When they have a problem you start by having them watch your mouth, then watch while you exaggerate the sound (with /i/ you would smile *big* and with /e/ you would drop your jaw even more), then if they still don't have it you can use the label, which usually narrows it down considerably. Both my 9yo and 7yo have benefited from the program (which I do teach at home).

 

Another possible piece of the puzzle, does your ds see words in his mind? I personally see pictures but neither I nor my 9yo dd can see words, which doesn't help spelling at all. I have been using Seeing Stars (SS) by the same people, and it is helping both of us learn to see words in our minds for spelling. I only bought the manual for SS (which is a full reading program if you buy the kit) and I add the exercises to AAS.

 

Heather