Question
I have a student with a Specific Learning Disability. Formal testing has ruled out CAPD. The parent has raised the issue of using auditory amplification for the student in the classroom as a means of improving comprehension of verbally presented instruction. Is there any research in this regard? Can the use of an auditory trainer or mechanical speaker system assist children with language learning disorders to understand/process verbal instruction?
Answer
I apologize in advance because I will be answering your questions with more questions. You state that the student has a Specific Learning Disability. How was that diagnosed? If the child has difficulty with language learning and seems to need assistance with understanding and processing verbal instruction, I am surprised that CAPD was ruled out. This raises questions in my mind about the assessment tools used both for LD and for APD. I suspect there may be some inconsistencies in the findings or perhaps some tools were overlooked that might have been more sensitive to the problems this child is having. The simplest answer to your basic question is that there is plenty of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of an FM system for enhancing a child's ability to intake the auditory signal from the teacher in the classroom. An FM system overcomes distance and reverberation and would help absolutely anyone, so there is no justification for thinking that it wouldn't help this particular child in some way. What is more important to me, however, is whether the enhancement of the signal with an FM system is the only thing that this child might need. That is a question I cannot address without more specific information about which tests have been used to assess this child and what the results are.
Dr. Deborah Moncrieff is an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in Pediatric Audiology and Auditory Processing Disorders. Her research is focused on assessment tools for APD, the prevalence of APD in school-age children, and brain mechanisms underlying APD across the lifespan.
Deborah Moncrieff, PhD
Assistant Professor in the Communication Sciences Department at the University of Connecticut
Deborah Moncrieff received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1999 in Cognition and Neuroscience. She is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Sciences Department at the University of Connecticut. She uses several different methodologies to investigate how the brain processes auditory information, including standard clinical behavioral tests of auditory processing, multi-channel electrophysiology, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. She has examined the prevalence of auditory processing disorders in school-age children, especially in those with dyslexia, and is investigating the presence of temporal processing deficits in children diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). Across all ages, she is especially interested in how to provide remedial training and intervention when an auditory processing disorder has been diagnosed. Her long-term goal is to provide deficit-specific training designed to help individuals overcome the processing deficits that interfere with comprehension and communication.
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