Phonological Processing
Phonological Processing
Phonological Processing is the processing of Speech Sounds as opposed to all sounds. If we cannot distinguish different phonemes, which are single speech sounds, very well, we cannot readily separate them. This leads to inaccurate spelling such as, ‘split’ spelt as ‘spit’. Reading becomes slow and imprecise and so no strong memory is placed for accurate recall. Think of poor Percy in 1896, ‘words, written, make no impression on his mind’. We have to assimilate phonemes accurately to replay them accurately. ‘Rapid Naming’ simply means how quickly we name things and in terms of the diagnosis of Dyslexia we go back to the basics and assess the speed of the individual’s reading of both letters and digits. Go back to the third paragraph and read the description of Dyslexia used by the British Dyslexia Association in 2007, it includes Rapid Naming difficulties. The most consistent deficit in all my own assessment score profiles of people assessed as being Dyslexic is below average reading of non-sequential letters, which is described as Rapid Letter Naming, because their long term recall of the sounds is slow and misfires with the precise timing mechanism required to link the sound of a letter to its image.
And Hearing
Background information prior to an assessment will establish if the child or adult has suffered multiple ear infections, which may have affected the ease of the individual’s natural assimilation of speech sounds. If a child is struggling to hear, the first step should be a visit to the GP, on a basic level, think of ear-wax, a quick syringe and all is well! And if the child needs an audiogram the sooner they have one the better for the child. Again if the child or adult will benefit from wearing aids to hear, the sooner they have them the better. If problems persist an assessment would be a good next step, having checked out vision as well…. who said life was easy!