COMPARISON OF CONVENTIONAL AUDITORY PROCESSING EVALUATION WITH A NEWLY DEVELOPED NON VERBAL AUDITORY PROCESSING BATTERY IN A PEDIATRIC POPULATION

Iliadou V (1), Ferguson MA (2), Kaprinis St (1), Moore DR (2).

(1) Clinical Psychoacoustics Laboratory, Medical School Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; (2) MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham, UK.

Background: Controversies in auditory processing disorder (APD) diagnosis exist as to the influence of top-down cognitive effects as a by-product during evaluation using the conventional tests.

Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the auditory processing results of a conventional battery (CB) and one newly developed adaptive computer-based test battery (IMAP) in a group of children suspected of learning disabilities.

Material and Methods: 32 children between the ages of 8-13 years suspected of having learning disabilities were first tested with a conventional APD test battery.  After being diagnosed with APD on the basis of the CB they were evaluated with the IMAP battery, which provides apart from individual auditory processing task results, two derived measures of temporal and frequency resolution that specifically test sensory processing.   The control group consisted of 15 children between the ages of 8-13 years with normal IQ referred for learning disabilities and having normal auditory processing abilities as measured by the same CB used for the APD group.

Results: Analyzing data with the Mann Whitney test for the two independent sample groups, the APD group (diagnosed with the CB) had poorer results in the following IMAP auditory processing tests compared with the control group. The two groups differed significantly in both backward masking conditions with BM0 z=-2.198, p=0.028; BM50   z=-2.717, p=0.007; in simultaneous masking with notch z=-2.098, p=0.036 and in frequency resolution z=-2.828, p=0.005 and frequency discrimination with z=-2.054, p=0.04.

Conclusion:  This research indicates that in an overall test battery approach, the two batteries show statistically significant similarities in categorizing children according to their auditory processing abilities. Their differences may be attributed to both bottom-up processes (sensory deficits, as evidenced by poor frequency resolution on IMAP), and top-down cognitive effects, evidenced by IMAP individual auditory processing tasks.

Email: viliad@auth.gr