by Becky L. Spivey, M.Ed.
What are auditory skills?
Auditory skills are extremely critical in the development of receptive
language (understanding what we hear) and expressive language
(responding appropriately to what we hear). Both receptive language and
expressive language create the foundation for achieving academic success.
Beginning at birth, your family doctor and healthcare professionals
monitor your child’s ear health, especially after experiencing ear infections,
illnesses that produce an extremely high fever, dizziness, oozing of
fluid from the ear, or impacted earwax. Children who experience an
undetectable hearing loss may struggle in school because of their poor auditory skills. Other children may
not reach the auditory milestones for their age due to a lack of experiences and opportunities to practice
language at home. All of these problems can interfere with language development. Even if your child
never had any of the problems listed above, but you notice “something just isn’t right” about your child’s
language skills (especially in comparison to his peers), make your concerns known to your family health
professionals and the educational specialists in your child’s school.
As a parent, if I voice my concerns about my child’s language to school
professionals, how can they help?
In a school setting, a speech-language pathologist (SLP), a learning disabilities specialist, or audiologist
can evaluate your child’s auditory skills (and other related skills) to determine if a problem truly exists.
Should the health professionals not find a physical reason for the auditory difficulties, the child may have
an auditory processing disorder (also referred to as a central auditory processing disorder), or CAPD, which
is a breakdown in the hearing process. In other words, the brain cannot make sense of what our ears hear
because of some distortion of the auditory signal. If left untreated, CAPD can lead to academic deficits in
areas such as phonics, reading, and spelling. The emergence of academic deficits may also alert a teacher,
parents, or other professional to suspect CAPD. However, it is vitally important to determine whether your
child’s difficulty comprehending and producing intelligible speech in the classroom is actually related to
CAPD or whether the difficulty stems from another disorder altogether.
When a child is of school age, an audiologist specializing in CAPD follows up to conclusively confirm or
rule out the diagnosis. Speech-language pathologists, psychologists, special educators, or other trained
specialists in language development will be able to identify any disparities in the child’s auditory skills,
including:
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Auditory attention: noticeably antsy, can’t stay tuned in, zones out during extended instruction,
story time, or circle time. The child requires hands-on learning and/or visual support.
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Auditory memory: difficulty remembering a series of numbers or words or pointing to a series of
items. This affects how your child processes and responds to school instructions and oral directions.
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Auditory discrimination: ability to hear subtle differences between similar-sounding words (fever/
beaver). When people speak rapidly, or there is background noise, the child may be confused even
when he is really trying hard to listen.
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Phonemic awareness: ability to identify individual speech sounds
in the beginning and ending sounds of words, tell whether or not
words with rhyme with each other, and blend a series of sounds
together to form a word. Difficulty with phonemic awareness can
lead to the inability to decode (read) and encode (spell) because
blending and isolating sounds are necessary for reading. If there is
little phonemic organization (phonemes to syllables to words), word
retrieval can also be very difficult.
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Auditory figure-ground: the ability (typically by age 7) to focus on the voice of one person (teacher)
and block out competing noises (classroom). If the child is overly attentive to all sound input, the
teacher’s voice blends into the background noise, and then listening (particularly within group
settings) becomes a challenge.
Auditory skills play an important role in all aspects of a child’s development of language. Besides assessing
his auditory skills, the SLP in the school will examine your child’s social language (how we use language
in “real life”), articulation (pronouncing words), voice quality (hoarseness, breathiness, and resonance),
and fluency. Once the examination is complete, the SLP will discuss the results with you at that time, or
contact you to come in and review the results later. In either case, you will receive a detailed summary of
the evaluation. If the SLP/examiner pinpoints weak areas in your child’s language development, he/she may
suggest further testing in order to understand the specifics of your child’s disability (if there is one) and
develop a plan, such as an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), in order for your child to receive instruction
in school tailored to meet his needs.
If your child qualifies for an IEP, remember that the IEP is a legal and binding document. The school system
must provide the individualized instruction promised to your child. Parents are equal members of the IEP
team that will plan goals and suggest strategies for your child’s instruction, the particular services your
child will receive, how often your child will receive these services, where instruction will take place, and
his grade-level expectations. After a certain period, your child will be re-evaluated to determine if he
should continue receiving services or if he has reached the goals set for him. If the child does not make
the anticipated progress the team expected, the IEP team may determine that the child should continue
receiving services, and the team (along with parental input) will adjust any goals or strategies listed in the
IEP at this time.
Resources
Hamaguchi, Patricia McAleer. 2010. Childhood Speech, Language & Listening Problems, Third Edition- What Every Parent Should Know. Pages 50-55.
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