1. Introduction to CAPD: From A – Z, Referrals to Treatment
Kansas State University
Communication Sciences & Disorders
K-State Speech and Hearing Center
Robert Garcia, Au.D., CCC-A
Debra Burnett, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

2. Goals of the Presentation
Who are these children?
What is the child’s perspective?
What is the parents’ perspective?
What is the school’s perspective?
What are the areas of intervention?
Can these children thrive in school?

3. CAPD Definition
The inability to attend to, discriminate, recognize, or comprehend information presented auditorily, even though the person has normal intelligence and normal hearing sensitivity. These differences are more pronounced when listening to low redundancy (distorted speech), when there are competing sounds, or in poor acoustic environments (Keith, 1986).

4. Symptoms of CAPD Short attention span
Easily distracted by background noise
Often gives slow or delayed responses
Difficulty with phonics and sound discrimination
Difficulty following verbal directions
Inconsistent awareness to additional sounds
Verbal IQ is lower than Performance IQ
Delayed reading skills
Not a good incidental learner

5. Who Are These Children? Incidence rate
When do they start showing symptoms?
How do these children describe themselves?
How do these children typically compensate?

6. Parents’ Perspective What are their primary concerns?
How do they describe their child with CAPD?
What have parents’ typically experienced prior to their child receiving the diagnosis of CAPD?
Denial, Anger, Fear, Hopeful

7. School’s Perspective ADD or ADHD Behavior problem Slow learner
Underachiever
Poor parenting

8. How do CAPD difficulties impact the classroom and learning at home?
Difficulty hearing in noise/competing signal
Poor spelling and reading comprehension skills
Poor auditory memory
Difficulty with prosodic cues in language
Difficulty with auditory closure
Difficulty with incidental learning
Poor problem solving skills

9. CAPD Test Battery Dichotic Speech Temporal Processing
Monaural Low-Redundancy
Phonetics
Auditory Memory

10. Counseling Parents Realistic expectations School’s responsibility
Parents’ responsibility
Child’s responsibility

11. Parents must focus on the following:
Reading
Homework strategies
Communication and goal setting with teachers
Problem solving skills
Emotional support of child

12. Four Areas of Intervention
Environmental
Teaching
Compensatory strategies
Therapy

13. EARSS Therapy Program
Goals
Therapy Method
Outcomes
Conclusions

14. EARSS Program Follows M3 Model (Ferre, 1998)
Message: Quality/characteristics of the signal
Medium: Quality of listening environment
Me: Listening behavior (attitudes, strategies, and skills) individual brings to the listening environment
Tasks include those used in the Buffalo Model (Katz) and based on training from the Midwest Ear Institute

15. EARSS Program Tasks to address the “Message”
Phoneme Training Program (PTP)
Phonemic Synthesis (PS) Therapy
Short Term Auditory Memory (STAM) Training – tolerance fading memory
Dichotic Offset Training (DOT) – binaural integration
Temporal Patterning

16. EARSS Program Tasks to address the “Medium”
Noise tolerance training (Words-in-Noise Training)
Modifying environment/compensatory techniques

17. EARSS Program Tasks to address the “Me” component:
EARSS Goal: Increase child’s self-awareness and active listening skills
Includes speechreading, self-advocacy, & attribution training
Asks the child to attend to positive and negative experiences during the week
Talks about and implement strategies (including role plays)

18. Outcomes CAP evaluation results as “pre-test”
Weekly progress monitoring along with a post-test battery completed following each round of EARSS
For children completing EARSS as recommended, ALL make progress
When language/literacy concerns are present, combination treatment is provided (often EARSS alone, then in tandem with EARSS sessions)

19. Conclusions About CAPD
Is CAPD a real issue?
Will intervention work?
Is there is quick fix?
Who are the key players in dealing with CAPD?
What are the long-term outcomes?

20. Thank you!!!