Understanding the Process

  Baseline Data How do you know if you need a hearing aid if you haven’t had a diagnostic test? You need to test your auditory system to determine: a) Do you have a hearing loss or is it something else? b) Whether the issue is medically treatable? It could be that you will require…

Bottom-up, not Top-down That’s how you climb up a ladder to reach the top. You can’t magically get to the top if you are at the bottom, you need to work your way up. No one started out by riding a unicycle or walking a tightwire.  They first rolled over, crawled, pulled to stand, stood,…

The only way to know if your insurance covers Hearing Kids‘ services, is to check with your insurance company.   Insurance companies cover their stated services when they deem it medically necessary.  An auditory medical issue would include middle ear fluid.  It need not include a developmental delay and most certainly does not include an academic…

The debate continues… Speech vs. non-speech tests For certain auditory processing assessments it is possible to use a non-speech based stimuli.  For example, it is known that phonemic awareness is a foundational skill that underlies reading.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and separate out the distinct sounds in a word and, when sounds…

The Debate A great debate exists questioning whether Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is even “real”? Could APD exist when test items are speech based or should a diagnosis be based only on tests using non-speech items?  (For more about speech vs. non-speech based APD testing see here.) This thinking was based on the belief that…

Orton-Gillingham Wilson LiPS Seeing Stars Barton KIPP Read 180 Reading Rocket … Have you ever wondered why there are so many reading programs? The Situation Perhaps you suspect your child has trouble reading and would like to optimize the help you get through your child’s school? Maybe the school has informed you they would like to…

Unless you are in a Tibetan monastery, schools are not known for their quiet. Dave, Michelle and Skylar all had difficulty with listening in a noisy environment. They all began sound therapy. Michelle satisfactorily completed the protocol in 9 weeks. Skylar finished in 12 weeks. While Dave took a little, longer finishing after 5 months.…

Approaches Physiological assessments have a simple approach, measure the function of the anatomical parts in question.  In our case this would mean the parts that make up the auditory pathway.  The pros and cons of this approach with the tools available can be seen in the previous article,  Physiological Assessment of the Auditory System. Behavioral…

As a follow up to our introduction on creating an assessment battery (see here), this three part series  will take a closer look at the benefits and limitation of the three different assessment options. Physiological Assessments Benefits These tests assess function objectively based on anatomical areas. This means the person doesn’t have to be actively…

Same or Different? Just what is the difference between language processing disorder vs. auditory processing disorder? The answer is not simple.  Even more importantly, this is a touchy subject that evokes a lot of passionate opinions amongst various professionals.  This includes the obvious audiologist and speech-language pathologist as well as the less obvious educational psychologist…