Posted by saw on 11:36 Sep 25
In Reply to: Bummer! I can't post on the special needs board. Processing/APD question. posted by Mandamom
know a bit about auditory processing disorder. I'm not familiar with the WPPSI and have only a bit of familiarity with the WISC. For what it's worth, it's common for gifted children to have a discrepancy on the WISC between the verbal/perceptual scores and the processing speed scores; so common in fact, that many testers will separate out the GAI (which excludes the processing score) from the FSIQ (the whole score) when determining who is "gifted" or not. I'm not sure if the WPPSI has the same issue or not, though.
Why do you think this is an APD issue? APD kids tend to have lower verbal scores than perceptual scores (emphasis on tend; my son's were identical). Has someone suggested APD?
There are a number of subtypes of APD and the symptoms vary according to subtype. The type apparently relates to which part of the nervous system is affected. My son has the integrative subtype, which means that his left and right brain do not work well together. He has word retrieval trouble, can act hard of hearing sometimes (his left ear is non-functional -- it hears, but the information goes nowhere -- the ear scored a zero on the test), has some coordination problems, difficulty in following multistep directions and gets confused if there is too much auditory stimuli. He's the kind of kid who seems unbelievably bright at times and, at other times, just downright dumb.
The symptoms of APD can co-exist with dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, but they don't have to, and they can also make it look as though a child is ADHD or something they're not.
It's not a problem that is as well-known or studied as other learning problems, and we're just coming to grips with it (ds was diagnosed this summer).
If you suspect APD, I suggest you check out the American Speech Hearing Association's information. If you google CAPD or CAPD, you'll come up with sites that will allow you to compare your child's symptoms to the checklists.
You should know that the recommendation is not to test children for APD before the age of 7; ds was 6.3 when tested and that was because the Gifted Development Center gave us a preliminary diagnosis on the basis of his history. We were seen by the AbleKids Foundation in Fort Collins. This is lots of info, but I hope that some of it is helpful. If you can give me an idea of why you suspect APD, I might be able to help more, although I'm really just at the beginning stage of dealing with it.