Since the APD controversy has been going on for years with no end in sight despite the mounting evidence pointing to the lack of its validity, we know that SLPs will continue to have students on their caseloads diagnosed with APD. Even worse, in many of these situations, the diagnosis of APD limits the provision of appropriate language-based services to the student. Furthermore, APD then becomes the “primary” diagnosis for the student, which places SLPs in situations in which they must address inappropriate therapeutic targets based on an audiologist’s recommendations. Unfortunately, on numerous occasions when the students do receive the diagnosis of APD, the testing does not “dig further,” which leads to many of them not receiving appropriate comprehensive language-literacy assessments. However, all the research to date indicates that these symptoms are indicative of broader language-based deficits, which require targeted language/literacy-based interventions rather than recommendations for specific prescriptive programs (e.g., CAPDOTS, Fast ForWord, etc.) or mere in-school accommodations. Now, it is important to reiterate that students diagnosed with “APD” present with legitimate symptomology (e.g., difficulty processing language, difficulty organizing narratives, difficulty decoding text, etc.). In other words, the diagnosis of APD did not reveal any new information regarding the child beyond the fact that s/he is in great need of a comprehensive language assessment in order to determine which language-based interventions s/he would optimally benefit from. Instead, these studies showed that the children diagnosed with APD exhibited language-based deficits. In other words, none of the reviewed studies had conclusively proven that APD was a distinct clinical disorder. Even more disappointing was that the children in these studies presented with incredibly diverse symptomology. The authors concluded that “The listening difficulties of children with APD may be a consequence of cognitive, language, and attention issues rather than bottom-up auditory processing” (de Wit et al., 2016, p. Unfortunately, they unearthed only one study with strong methodological quality. After a search of 6 databases, they chose 48 studies which satisfied appropriate inclusion criteria. They reviewed research studies which described the characteristics of APD in children to determine whether these characteristics merited a label of a distinct clinical disorder vs. In April 2016, de Wit and colleagues published a systematic review in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. All of these reduce the document’s credibility.” It also does not include input from diverse affected groups. 124)įurthermore, in April 2017, an article entitled: “ AAA (2010) CAPD clinical practice guidelines: need for an update ” (also written by DeBonnis) concluded that the “ AAA CAPD guidance document will need to be updated and re-conceptualised in order to provide meaningful guidance for clinicians” due to the fact that the “AAA document … does not reflect the current literature, fails to help clinicians understand for whom auditory processing testing and intervention would be most useful, includes contradictory suggestions which reduce clarity and appears to avoid conclusions that might cast the CAPD construct in a negative light. To illustrate, in June 2015, the American Journal of Audiology published an article by David DeBonis entitled: “ It Is Time to Rethink Central Auditory Processing Disorder Protocols for School-Aged Children.” In this article, DeBonis pointed out numerous inconsistencies involved in APD testing and concluded that “routine use of APD test protocols cannot be supported” and that “intervention needs to be contextualized and functional” (DeBonis, 2015, p. More and more studies in the fields of audiology and speech-language pathology began confirming the lack of validity of APD as a standalone (or useful) diagnosis. In recent years there has been an increase in research on the subject of diagnosis and treatment of Auditory Processing Disorders (APD), formerly known as Central Auditory Processing Disorders or CAPD. Freebies Smart Speech Therapy Freebies!Įarn 10 Reward Points by commenting the blog post.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |