April 10, 2008

I saw one client this week. He was a 4 year old boy who was here for a Speech Diagnostic. The mother expressed she was very concerned due to his lack of vocalizations. She thought he might have autism. We had to use VRA with this child which was very abnormal. He was very fussy, and would not keep headphones or inserts on. Therefore, we had to use soundfield to evaluate his hearing. His thresholds were within normal limits; however, we cannot determine any ear specific information.

In APD this week, we were discussing how some individuals with and APD may not be able to take a foreign language class because of the processing difficulties. In our handout it stated that some individuals may be able to learn ASL instead.

I wanted to find an article about the correlation of and APD and difficulty in learning a foreign language. I found an article that discusses college students with LLD and the phonological core as risk for failure in foreign language classes. In the article, they said that deficits in the native langauge skills as well as phonological processing skills may cause the difficulties in learning a foreign language. They evaluated the students through word recognition testing, spelling, foreign-language aptitude, pig-latin, and nonword repetition. These tests were able to successfully determine students at risk for having difficulty in a foreign language class. The authors of this article suggested that implementing a program that would take into account these difficulties would allow students, who otherwise would not be able to learn a foreign language, the opportunity to learn a second language.

Reference:
Downey, D.M., and Snyder, L.E. (2000). College students with LLD: The phonological core as risk for failure in foreign language classes. Topics in Langauge Disorders 21(1). 82-92.

If you would like to read this article, please copy and paste the following link into your browser:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=16&hid=8&sid=df0efaf3-21ca-4d06-94be-615fdc061c64%40SRCSM2