Auditory Discrimination Test Health Article

Definition

An auditory discrimination test is a screening or diagnostic assessment tool designed to identify and diagnose deficits in auditory discrimination.>

Purpose

Auditory discrimination is a central auditory processing skill that involves the ability to differentiate among phonemes—the smallest significant units of sound in a language. Phonemes are combined into words. For example the word "goes" is made up of three phonemes: "g," "oh," and "zzz." Auditory discrimination is part of phonology which, in turn, is one of the five components of language.

Auditory discrimination tests (ADTs) are one type of auditory analysis tests, which are used to measure how well a child understands speech and the spoken word. ADTs are designed to measure a child's phonological awareness—the ability to focus on and manipulate phonemes within spoken words. Phonological awareness skills include the ability to do the following:

• compare and contrast speech sounds
• separate and blend phonemes
• identify phonemes within spoken words
• combine phonemes into spoken words

ADTs measure a child's ability to detect subtle similarities and differences between speech sounds. Two of the most commonly used ADTs are Wepman's Auditory Discrimination Test (WADT) and the Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Test of Auditory Discrimination.

Auditory discrimination skills are very important in the classroom. Activities that require auditory discrimination skills include the following:

• following directions
• reading
• writing
• spelling

Auditory discrimination ability or phonological awareness skills have long been correlated with reading ability. Some specialists believe that ADTs should be a component of all reading programs and that poor auditory discrimination can be a major factor in children's failure to reach reading targets. The WADT is used to evaluate communication skills in general, as well to identify potential reading difficulties and to predict certain types of speech defects. Because it requires a child to recognize small differences between phonemes, the WADT is widely used to measure a child's readiness for reading instruction using a phonic method.

Some underachieving but gifted children have learning disabilities that are caused by deficits in central auditory skills, including auditory discrimination. The WADT commonly is used to test for an auditory discrimination deficit in such children. Deficits in auditory discrimination are also believed to be one of the causes of central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). There are various methods for addressing auditory discrimination problems in children.

Description

Auditory discrimination is one component of central auditory processing skills or auditory perception. The other components are as follows:

• auditory memory: the ability to recall a sequence of auditory stimuli or phonemes
• auditory blending: the ability to perceive separate phenomes, divide a word into phenomes, and combine phenomes into words
• auditory comprehension: the ability to comprehend and interpret information that is presented orally

The WADT

The WADT, first published in 1958 and revised in 1973, is designed to measure the ability of children aged four to eight to recognize small differences between English phonemes. The test consists of 40 pairs of words. The words in a pair are of equal length. In ten of the pairs the words are identical. In the remaining 30 pairs the words differ by a single phoneme. The test requires the child to differentiate between the following:

• 13 word-pairs differing in their initial consonant, such as "coast" and "toast"
• four word-pairs differing in their medial vowels, such as "pat" and "pet"
• 13 word-pairs differing their final consonant, such as "lease" and "leash"
• 10 identical word-pairs or false choices, such as "jam" and "jam"

Often the WADT is administered by a special education teacher or a speech/language pathologist. The test is administered orally to an individual child who is seated such that neither the examiner's mouth nor the words on the test form are visible to the child. The examiner reads each word-pair only once, and the child indicates whether the word-pair consists of different or identical words. The test requires about five to 10 minutes to administer. The performance rating scale ranges from "very good development" for the child's age to "below adequate" for the child's age. Two equivalent forms of the test are provided so that children can be retested if their initial scores are questionable or if the test is needed for evaluating the effectiveness of subsequent remedial instruction. The WADT is widely considered to be both reliable and valid, with norms based on the scores of 2,000 children.

The WADT is considered to be a fast, inexpensive means of screening children for auditory discrimination deficits and for identifying children who are slower than average in developing auditory discrimination skills. It also is used to identify children who may have difficulty learning the phonics that are necessary for learning to read. The WADT often is used as a component of formal reading assessments.