Auditory skills

Auditory skills are one of the most important areas of any child's development. Without a correct appreciation of the kind of sounds that make up language or the ability to discriminate or memorise sounds and words in the correct sequence, children cannot easily learn to make sense of the world around them.

It is well understood that most children who have learning difficulties which involve written or spoken language tend to have weak auditory skills, not surprisingly, a large proportion of the many tests for dyslexia attempt to measure these kind of skills.

The task of measuring a child's auditory skills is not difficult. However, the different areas of auditory skills which a child possesses are closely linked to each other, making it difficult to measure individual sub-skills. For example, if a child is asked to discriminate between two different sounds then first the child must memorise them both, therefore the ability to discriminate and remember sounds are inseparably linked.

What kind of things are tested?

Typically testing for dyslexia is carried out using tests from the BAS ( British Ability Scales) and tests the following kind of things.

CORE

Recall of Designs
Word Definitions
Pattern Construction
Matrices
Verbal Similarities
Quantitative Reasoning

DIAGNOSTIC

Recall of Objects - Immediate Verbal
Recall of Objects - Immediate Spatial
Recall of Objects - Delayed Verbal
Recall of Objects - Delayed Spatial
Speed of Information Processing
Recall of Digits Forward
Recall of Digits Backwards
Recognition of Pictures

ACHIEVEMENT

Number Skills
Spelling
Word Reading

AFTER THE TESTS

Once the tests are completed the results are usually compiled into a single sheet report headed 'psychometric perspective'. Roughly translated this simply means a measurement of range of psychological skills, arranged in such away as to make then more meaningful.

The results of such tests are usually given as : -

T-Scores

The T-Score is a statistic which enables a comparison to be made between tests.

Percentiles

This is a percentage of what other children of around the same age would be expected to score compared with the child being tested.

Standard Score

Is a simple method of showing an over-all score. A score of 100 is average, less than 100 is below average and greater than 100 is above average.

Frequency

The frequency is the percentage of children expected to show the difference between the standard scores and the scores predicted. However, only differences in a negative direction are considered.

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