April 3, 2008

This week I saw a college student referred from Disability Services. He had hearing thresholds within normal limits and an unremarkable case history. When asked about difficulties he had in school, he said that his only real difficulty was with his Japanese class. I thought he would have more problems in school than he claimed. The SCAN results were abnormal and the AFT-R results were very abnormal. His results on the SSW did not fit into any of the classifications.

I found an article on Auditory Temporal Processing Performance of Young Adults with Reading Disorders. In order to examine these students, they administered the Frequency and Duration Patterns Tests as well as the frequency difference limens for short and long duration tones. They found that the students who had the reading disorders had a significantly higher rate of errors on the duration patterns test than the control group. No differences were noted in the frequency patterns test. This study provided evidence of the relationship between lower level temporal processing skills and decoding efficiency.

Reference:
Walker, M.M, Shinn, J.B., Cranford, J.L., and Givens, G.D. (2002). Auditory temporal processing performance of young adults with reading disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 45(3). 598-605.

If you would like to read this article, please use the following link:
http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/reprint/45/3/598?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&fulltext=Auditory+processing+disorders&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=2/1/2000&resourcetype=HWCIT