Auditory Processing/Discrimination in Aspergers

[OverflowingMum]

My 6 yr old DD was diagnosed with Aspergers in Feb of this year.
Currently we are having loads of trouble with school not behavioural but to do with academic progress (or lack of LOL) but that's another story really.
But one thing which keeps being mentioned, and then swept under the carpet, is her poor auditory processing/discimination. This means that she mis-hears words all the time.
For example if on TV she hears a word said in a different accent, she cant realise that it is a word she know, and will ask "what does..... mean?" and repeat the word in the exact accent, not realising it is the same word IYSWIM as a waord she already knows.
This has been a n issue for years. Initially when we started having concerns about her we thought it was her hearing because of this, and have taken her to have her hearing checked 3 times.It also means she cant do phonics. AT ALL! I have kept telling school this, and despite this they have insisted in continuuing trying to teach her to read using phonics. For 2 years. Now, finally, they have realised she has a good visual memory and is now learning to read much better using a key word approach.
Recently she was assessed at school by the autism outreach team, and they have suggested she is referred to SALT for an assessment of her receptive language/auditory processing. She has seen SALT twice, who have basically said her language is within normal limits, but will they be able to look more specifically at auditory processing?? If so is there anything that can help with this or is it just one of those things that will always be difficult for her??
Anyone got any experience of this with ASD/Aspergers???
TIA

Hi Overflowing,

This has been flagged up with our ds (also ASD) and as well as being seen by the salt he was also assessed by the audiologist at local hospital. She confirmed hearing was fine and that it did seem as if his difficulties were caused by a processing delay related to his asd but in our case because his level of understanding/ seeming to mishear varies in different circumstances she didn't think it was clear that it was auditory processing disorder. She seemed to imply that it needed to be across the board to meet the criteria for that diagnosis. It sounds like it does affect your dd significantly. The local hospital audiologist did mention if it warranted further investigation would need to be referred to specialist in auditory processing.

Your first port of call might be gp to ask for a referral to a specialist in auditory processing - whether that has to be via local audiologist or developmental paediatrician, I don't know.

Also did the salt discuss your dd's relative strengths and weaknesses in terms of what percentile she was on within the normal range? They set the barrier for "normal" pretty low - anything above 16th percentile is classed as normal but your child will clearly still have major difficulty if they are on or near 16th percentile.

One last question - has she been evaluated by the educational psychologist - they should be able to suggest strategies that will work better with her more visual style of learning and to compensate for difficulties with auditory processing - which school could then put in her IEPs and hopefully implement successfully.

best wishes

My son has a low score for phonological awareness (explained to me as separating out words that you hear e.g. "and" and "the" he can hear as one word if said in a strong accent.

At Uni some of his lecturers did not have English as their first language and he struggled to understand their speech sometimes.