Treatment and Evaluation Indices of Auditory Processing Disorders

Abstract

ABSTRACT Listening skills were compared before and after a structured inter-vention program for a group of 20 children with auditory processing disor-ders (APD). Comparisons of pre- and post- management measures indi-cated a significant increase in speech recognition performance in degradedlistening conditions (background noise and competing speech). The APDmanagement approach was integrative and included top-down and bot-tom-up strategies. These findings add to a growing body of literature sug-gesting that interactive auditory training can improve communicationskills. KEYWORDS: Auditory processing disorder, auditory learning,management, degraded listening conditions Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of this article, the reader will (1) become familiar with one of the mea-sures of auditory processing, the index of performance accuracy, which reflects a global assessment of audi-tory information processing; (2) recognize the value of performance accuracy scores in degraded listening con-ditions in evaluating treatment efficacy for auditory processing disorders; and (3) recognize some of thelimitations of the performance accuracy index and the possible contribution of temporal measures in indicatingauditory processing difficulties and in evaluating treatment efficacy for auditory processing disorders.