Specialty Programs

Fast ForWord & Earobics

Auditory Processing Disorders occur when the neural pathways of the brain that relay auditory information do not send their signals correctly. In other words, a child who does not have a hearing impairment will audibly hear what is said to him, but will be unable to understand it correctly because the signal gets mixed up somewhere in his brain. These individuals often experience deficits in the areas of expressive and receptive language. The Speech-Language Pathologists at MPTC are trained to help children with this diagnosis learn different strategies which can help them understand what is spoken to them in the classroom and in everyday life. MPTC also offers specialized programs designed to help individuals with auditory processing difficulties: Fast ForWord and Earobics.

Fast ForWord is an intensive computer based program created by Scientific Learning Corporation. This program develops and strengthens memory, attention, sequencing, and rate of processing. These skills are critical to developing language and reading skills. Fast ForWord improves a child's phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, decoding, working memory, syntax, grammar, attention and their ability to process auditory information.

Earobics is an interactive language-training program from Cognitive Concepts. It uses various techniques to improve auditory processing, phonological awareness, and language comprehension. This program is used on a home computer with the child wearing headphones. Five training sessions of 20-30 minutes in duration per week are recommended, monitored weekly by the child's speech-language pathologist.