Auditory Skill Hierarchy - Explained

 

If you have a student with hearing aids or cochlear implants then you can and should be writing IEP goals/objectives and incorporating listening-based activities into your therapy sessions that target auditory skill development.  These should be based off of the principals underlying and the skills included in the auditory skill hierarchy.  But what's that?

First is detection.  Just as the name implies, it simply means there was a sound and the listener heard it.  They may not know what it was or where it came from, but they heard a sound.  This happens in my therapy room when my phone dings because I got a text and forgot to silence it or the principal makes an announcement.  My students looks around for the sound because they heard something, but they don't know what.  

Next is discrimination.  This is when the listener is able to tell if two sounds are the same or if they are different.  Was one sound longer or shorter?  Was one sound louder or quieter?  Was one sound higher or lower?  There is not yet meaning assigned to these sounds.  This is how I feel in noisy environments like restaurants or concerts.  I heard you, I know you said something to me, but I have no idea what you said.     

Then comes identification.  This is when it gets fun and more challenging.  Now meaning gets assigned to sound.  My student hears the text alert and knows it was my phone, but also hears the principal making an announcement and points to the speaker and says or signs "talk".  However, to move through this level of auditory skill development you must have LANGUAGE!!!  The student can't identify that you said "hot dog" if they don't know what a hot dog is.  And if they don't have spoken language or sign language, their only response option is to point to objects and pictures.  Imagine trying to have a child discriminate between CV (consonant-vowel) words differing by both consonant and vowel.  How can they do that if they don't have the language to at least understand "bee" vs. "pie"?  I love this level of the hierarchy because there are so many fun activities, but language therapy must be a critical part of your approach.  Students must have a large enough receptive vocabulary to draw upon.  I often start with photos of the student and their classmates/teachers or even their family members.  There is so much value in the student identifying these people, especially their own name.  You can make maximal contrasts in one-syllable vs. three-syllable names (ex. Liv vs. Anthony), or minimal contrasts with names with similar sounds (ex. Hannah, Anna, Abby).  

Last comes comprehension.  To be clear, you don't wait until after mastery of all other levels to target comprehension.  It is really always the underlying goal and should develop alongside the other levels of the hierarchy.  This level is about truly understanding spoken language through hearing.  It targets answering questions, following directions, and understanding stories.  So really, this level is very similar to what you may be targeting with many other students on your school-based caseload, simply with a focus on using the auditory channel.  In order to be a successful student in a classroom environment, following instructions and participating appropriately, you need to comprehend language.  One of my favorite components of this level is auditory memory.  I target this frequently using theme-based vocabulary and barrier-type activities.  I will definitely do a post on that and remind me if I forget!

Personal sidenote...these are a hierarchy of skills that we target to develop listening.  That said, I see great benefit to using sign language all along the way.  Not only does it provide a much needed foundation, it supports true comprehension.  In my Daily Sound Check post I talked about the auditory-visual-auditory sandwich.  Well, my sandwich has another layer...sign!  If I have presented my target word(s) three times and the student still hasn't correctly identified it, I'm going to sign it.  Even if they have correctly identified my target, I'm going to show them the sign so it's in their vocabulary.  Many of my students have speech articulation challenges that can make them hard to understand.  Why not provide sign language so that they can successfully communicate while they're still developing their other skills?  I love when I present a word/phrase and my student signs back what they think I said.  It gives me so much information about what they are and are not hearing, and the types of errors they're making drive my therapy.