19 Nov 2018Deficiency of Auditory processing skills is one of the roadblocks to learning. Auditory processing skills refer to the identification, organization and interpretation of what is heard. The sub skills are:
Auditory Discrimination: Ability to recognize the difference between similar sounding letters/ words as well as tone of voice. Children with this difficulty will struggle to know the difference between words such as big/beg, tone used in anger or amusement. Phonological awareness training which to identify, blend, segment and manipulate oral language structure is beneficial.
Auditory Closure: Ability to pull sounds/words together to form a word, phrase, sentence or thought. Children with difficulty struggle to communicate effectively as well as comprehend others.
Auditory Memory: The ability to accurately remember what is heard. Children with this difficulty find it hard to remember, comprehend and follow verbal instructions/ information. It also affects reading fluency. To recognise a word, a reader needs to have stored in their memory all the sound patterns of the words known and to be able to compare the pattern just heard with those patterns already stored to find the match and recognise the word.
Auditory Sequencing: Ability to put sounds in a correct order to form a word as well as organize oral information. Spelling and pronunciation are common problems faced by children with this problem.
Auditory Figure Ground: Ability to recognize important sounds or words against a background of noise. Children with this weakness find it hard to concentrate on a task and are easily distracted by other sounds.
Students need to have these skills in order to read, write, spell and do math effectively. Deficiencies in these skills affect social, educational and personal interactions. It is an underlying cause of learning difficulties, which can be identified by specific assessments. The information can then be used to provide targeted intervention to strengthen these weak areas. Based on deep research, knowledge and understanding of children’s learning needs.