Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

A child with an auditory processing disorder (APD) has difficulty processing or interpreting auditory information. This is a common disorder in children, even in those children with normal hearing abilities and normal intelligence.

A child with an auditory processing disorder may have difficulty understanding speech in the presence of background noise, such as a noisy classroom. The child may be unable to understand and follow spoken directions. The child may have difficulty discriminating and identifying individual speech sounds.

Some symptoms of APD are as follows:

• Behaving as if a hearing loss is present, even though hearing sensitivity is known to be normal
• Requiring frequent repetitions - saying "what?" or "huh?" or "I didn't hear you"
• Having difficulty paying attention to auditory tasks and/or being easily distracted by background noise
• Having difficulty following complex or multi-step directions; having difficulty being able to localize sound
• Having difficulty with phonics or speech sounds
• Possessing poor reading, listening, or spelling skills
• Turning in a below-average academic performance despite normal I.Q. scores
• Showing a speech and language delay that is not improving despite therapy
• Having a short attention span
• Showing delayed responses to auditory information

Treating Language-Based Reading Disorders

Speech Pathologists are uniquely qualified as sound and language specialists to train written language skills. Our Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) are trained using a combination of skills derived from Orton-Gillingham instruction, and Lindamood-Bell Training, cogitative retraining, and behavioral intervention.

We believe in a team approach to curing reading disorders. We believe in including child, parents, teachers, other therapists, and physicians. We go to many locations in the Atlanta area to help children where they need it most - in the academic setting.

Orton-Gillingham Instruction

Orton-Gillingham is a phonetically based, structured approach effective in teaching reading, spelling, and writing of dyslexic students. Sound systems are taught employing all of the learning pathways--auditory, visual, activity based, and tactile.

The Orton-Gillingham curriculum teaches, at appropriate developmental times, phonograms for decoding and encoding spelling rules and generalizations, writing, and syllable types.

Lindamood-Bell Training

Individuals become aware of the mouth actions which produce speech sounds. This awareness becomes the means of verifying sounds within words and enables individuals to become self-correcting in reading and spelling, and speech.

It is common for individuals to gain several grade levels in decoding ability in four weeks to six weeks of intensive instruction, or to make further gains in speech-language after hitting a plateau under traditional speech therapy.

Fast ForWord Programs

PediaSpeech offers the Fast ForWord programs, a research-based computer program that develops brain processing efficiency through intensive, adaptive software exercises.