Prevalence and remediation of spatial processing disorder (SPD) in Indigenous children in regional Australia

Objective: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of spatial processing disorder (SPD) in the Indigenous Australian population and the benefit of and logistical issues arising from remediation of the disorder. Design: Participants were assessed for SPD with the Listening in Spatialized Noise – Sentences test (LiSN-S). Participants diagnosed with SPD were instructed to use the LiSN & Learn auditory training software until 100 games had been completed. Study sample: Participants were 144 Indigenous Australian children (aged between 6;0 [years;months] and 12;2). Results: Ten participants (6.9%) presented with SPD. Nine took part in the auditory training study. Post-training LiSN-S performance improved on average by 0.9 population standard deviations (1.4 dB). There was a significant correlation (r = 0.71, p = 0.031, η² = 0.51) between total number of LiSN & Learn games played (mean = 65, SD = 27) and improvement in LiSN-S performance. Teachers rated all participants as improving in their listening abilities post-intervention. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of SPD in the Indigenous Australian population. LiSN & Learn training is effective in remediating SPD in this population and is considered a beneficial intervention by teachers, however improvement in spatial processing is dependent on training program uptake.10 page(s

The SCAN-C in testing for auditory processing disorder in a sample of British children.

The SCAN-C is a test for auditory processing disorders in children developed in the USA. There are concerns that the SCAN-C may over-diagnose auditory processing disorders in UK children. There are also questions concerning the impact of language level and interpretation of SCAN-C results. SCAN-C results from 99 Oxfordshire school children aged 6 to 10 were compared to US-based normative data. Across all age bands, the UK sample scored significantly worse on two subtests: the filtered words (FW) and auditory figure-ground (AFG) sections as well as on the composite score. Differences in performance were largely due to accent effects. Applying US norms to UK children's performance results in a high rate of over-identification of listening difficulties. However, we show that US norms can be used provided SCAN-C scores for children in the UK are adjusted by adding a constant. Using factor analysis, SCAN-C subtests mapped onto two factors; FW and AFG onto a 'monaural low-redundancy degradation' factor, and CW and CS onto a 'binaural separation/competition' factor. Implications for use of the SCAN-C with UK children are discussed