Abstract
ABSTRACT Purpose: 1) to verify the intervention effects of an informal auditory training program to stimulate auditory abilities for sound localization and sequential memory for verbal and non-verbal sounds, at school environment in a group of preschoolers; 2) to investigate the influence of the gender and age variables on the result of the Simplified Auditory Processing Test (test and retest). Methods: a prospective, analytical and intervention study developed at a Municipal School of Early Childhood Education. Fifty-one preschool children of both genders, aged between 4 and 6 years, participated in this study. To evaluate the intervention effects of the informal auditory training program, pre-and post-intervention procedures were performed, that is: meatoscopy, tympanometry and Simplified Auditory Processing Test. Appropriate statistical tests were applied, by adopting the 5% (0.05) significance level. Results: the comparison of the preschoolers’ performance on the test and retest showed a significant improvement in all auditory abilities assessed. Preschoolers showed a better performance in sound localization ability and a worse performance for sequential memory of nonverbal sounds ability, for both test and retest. Conclusion: in this population, the informal auditory training program showed to be effective and the age variable influenced the result of the Simplified Auditory Processing Test.
Highlights
Processes needed for language and learning development are quite complex, as they involve networks of neurons distributed in different brain regions, in which their connections are related to speech perception[1].Auditory system is responsible for auditory behavioral phenomena in front of different acoustic signals such as sound localization and lateralization, auditory discrimination, auditory recognition, perception of auditory temporal aspects, perception of acoustic signal in front of other competitive auditory stimulus and auditory performance with degraded acoustic signal, called auditory closure ability, in which all these behaviors refer to the Central Auditory Processing (CAP) 2.The development of auditory abilities and underlying cortical substrates involved in the perception of small changes in sounds occur in a very early age[3]
Conclusion: in this population, the informal auditory training program showed to be effective and the age variable influenced the result of the Simplified Auditory Processing Test
A study conducted with children aged 8 to 12 years, distributed in a group with disorders related to reading and writing and a control group of children with typical development aimed to compare the performance in the Simplified Auditory Processing Test (SAPT) and Pediatric Speech Intelligibility Test (PSI) and showed that children with learning difficulties had a greater number of alterations in central auditory processing tests[5]
Summary
Processes needed for language and learning development are quite complex, as they involve networks of neurons distributed in different brain regions, in which their connections are related to speech perception[1].Auditory system is responsible for auditory behavioral phenomena in front of different acoustic signals such as sound localization and lateralization, auditory discrimination, auditory recognition, perception of auditory temporal aspects, perception of acoustic signal in front of other competitive auditory stimulus and auditory performance with degraded acoustic signal, called auditory closure ability, in which all these behaviors refer to the Central Auditory Processing (CAP) 2.The development of auditory abilities and underlying cortical substrates involved in the perception of small changes in sounds occur in a very early age[3]. A study conducted with children aged 8 to 12 years, distributed in a group with disorders related to reading and writing and a control group of children with typical development aimed to compare the performance in the Simplified Auditory Processing Test (SAPT) and Pediatric Speech Intelligibility Test (PSI) and showed that children with learning difficulties had a greater number of alterations in central auditory processing tests[5]. Another study conducted in a school in the interior of São Paulo whose objective was to evaluate the auditory abilities performance of children with typical development, in an age group from 4 to 6 years, observed that 24.6% of them had alterations in at least one of the auditory abilities investigated, with a higher occurrence of alterations for younger children. In view of this result, the authors stated that the programs for investigation and monitoring of middle ear conditions and auditory abilities in pre-school and school age can eliminate or minimize complications that would alter sociolinguistic development[6]
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