Abstract
The integrity of the central auditory system is a fundamental condition for language development. Good language development is related to good academic performance and adaptive behavior. Therefore, the evaluation of auditory processing along with behavior as well as the verification of a possible relationship between them can indicate possible ways on how to deal with both problem behavior and difficulties in language. 187 parents of preschoolers (mean age 3.8 years) were interviewed individually and asked to fill in the CBCL (Child Behavior Checklist), for ages 1(1/2) to 5, providing a behavioral profile concerning externalizing and internalizing behavior. Children were assessed regarding central auditory processing skills through the Simplified Assessment of the Auditory Processing—SAAP (Pereira & Schochat, 1997) including Sound Source Localization (SSL); Non-Verbal Sound Sequence Memory (NVSSM); Verbal Sounds Sequence Memory (VSSM). To investigate a possible association between central auditory processing skills and behavioral problems, all the scores in CBCL and the total scores of Simplified Auditory Processing Assessment were correlated with functional parameters using the Spearman rank correlation. The behaviors “acts too young for age”; “constantly seeks help”; “does not eat well”; “does not seem to feel guilty after misbehaving”; “easily frustrated”; “nervous movements or twitching”; “nervous, highstrung, or tense”; “poorly coordinated or clumsy”; “repeatedly rocks head or body”; “stares into space and seems preoccupied”, “sulks a lot” and “wanders away” were correlated with poor auditory processing skills. This indicates that the school staff along with health professionals should provide informational counseling regarding, not only the communicative difficulties associated with a poor performance on central auditory processing skills but also the psychosocial difficulties that these children may be facing.
Highlights
The way the brain processes the sounds which are received from the environment refers to its ability to analyze their distinguishing physical characteristics such as frequency, intensity, and temporal features
This indicates that the school staff along with health professionals should provide informational counseling regarding, the communicative difficulties associated with a poor performance on central auditory processing skills and the psychosocial difficulties that these children may be facing
Some specific behaviors identified through the answers obtained in CBCL were negatively correlated, with statistical significance, with central auditory processing skills through the total punctuations obtained in SAAP, indicating that poor performance in central auditory processing was correlated with the stronger presence of behavioral problems
Summary
The way the brain processes the sounds which are received from the environment refers to its ability to analyze their distinguishing physical characteristics such as frequency, intensity, and temporal features. Central auditory processes are the mechanisms and processes of the auditory system responsible for some behavioral phenomena such as sound localization and lateralization; auditory discrimination and pattern recognition; temporal aspects of hearing; auditory performance decrements with competing acoustic signals and auditory performance decrements with degraded acoustic signals (ASHA, 1996). The integrity of the central auditory system is a fundamental condition for language development. Successful language development is related to good learning abilities and academic success (Bishop & Adams, 1990; Capovilla & Dias, 2008; Sharma, Purdy, & Kelly, 2009). There seems to be a high frequency of symptoms related to academic and behavioral difficulties in patients with auditory processing disorders (Fridlin, Pereira, & Perez, 2014)
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