Central auditory processing disorder in children with developmental dysphasia

Abstract

The author analyses the role of auditory perception in children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) using speech central tests. Disorders of speech comprehension are typical for all of the patients with central auditory processing disorders (CAPDs). In speech perception, temporal processing is one of the functions necessary for the discrimination of phonemes and of similar words. The existence of cognitive functions disorders is much more important than the existence of those that are directly involved in the speech production. Auditory decoding deficits, phonological, lexical, syntactic and associative deficits were diagnosed in children suffering from developmental dysphasia (this term is used in our country for SLI). Many of these children were unable to recognize acoustic contours and to identify the key words from a spoken message [T.J. Bellis, Assessment and Management and Central Auditory Processing Disorders in the Educational Setting, Singular, San Diego, 1996]. Among the characteristics of these central tests' findings are poor performance on mono aural low redundancy speech tests, bilateral deficits on dichotic speech tasks and poor word recognition skills. Competing sentences test and identification test with contralateral competing message represent binaural separation or integration. The dysphasic children (80) were tested by dichotic tasks—repetition of two-syllabic words and short sentences. Our results indicate the relationship between developmental dysphasia and central auditory processing disorder (CAPD): these dysphasic children have auditory processing deficit—not only integration, but also associative deficit.