Comparison of Persian staggered spondaic word test’s scores before and after rehabilitation in children with amblyaudia

Abstract

Background and Aim: Amblyaudia is a diagnostic issue in central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), which is characterized by asymmetry in dichotic listening performance. This disorder negatively affects the academic performance of children by influencing their information processing, reading, attention, etc. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of the dichotic interaural intensity difference (DIID) training on all auditory processing categories of the Buffalo Model using the Persian staggered spondaic word (P-SSW) test. Methods: The study was conducted on 17 children (11 girls and 6 boys) aged 8−12 years old diagnosed with amblyaudia. All children were first evaluated by the P-SSW test, and then participated in 10−12 sessions of the DIID training. The P-SSW test was taken again after completing the training program in order to evaluate the training effect. Results: The paired t-test results showed a significant reduction in the mean scores of decoding (p < 0.001) and tolerance fading memory (p < 0.004) categories as well as the total mean score of P-SSW test after training. The Wilcoxon test also showed the effect of this training on the integration category (p < 0.025). The McNemar test, however, showed no statistically significant effect of the DIID training on the organization category. Conclusion: The DIID training causes significant improvement in some central auditory processing categories of the Buffalo Model, including decoding, tolerance fading memory and integration.

Keywords

• Dichotic interaural intensity difference
• central auditory processing disorder
• amblyaudia