Listening Therapy Videos

Laynie recorded some listening therapy we did over the weekend.

First is the Ling 6 sound check. The sounds mm, ah, ee, oo, ss, and sh cover all of the frequencies of speech, so they should be checked before you practice listening. Probably should be checked every day. The point is for Laynie to hear them (like raising your hand when you hear a beep), but she can usually tell what they are, which is great.

In the next clip, Laynie is listening and saying the words she hears. She chose these ten common words, and we have been practicing them off and on for a few weeks.

Next is a list of words that has groups of words beginning with the same letter. Laynie might have the choices "pan, pail, Pete, pitch" and have to say which one she heard. It's not too hard, except that she hasn't heard the words before (or not anytime recently)--that makes it harder. She has to use her phonics knowledge and her listening skills to figure out which word I'm saying.

The last activity is me reading a book to Laynie and pointing out things that I see on each page. I don't think she's really listening to me read, because she's thinking about what I'm going to ask her to point to or say. Most people haven't really heard Laynie talk, but I can tell you that her speech has definitely improved. I should look for an old video of Laynie talking before implants, so you can see the difference. It's just amazing that she can imitate just using her hearing, without visual cues. In these videos, you can see Laynie using strategies, including narrowing down the choices by sound, focusing on one word at a time, and saying what she thinks she hears to check if she's right. So here is the train book. Oh, I split up the videos because someone (ahem) got distracted by a bird on the balcony and wasted some time. ;)

Laynie Is Making Great Progress

My spring break is this week, so I got to go to Laynie's auditory rehab session yesterday. She is doing so well!

Last week the therapist, K, told her that she is done with closed sets, because she is doing so well with them. K has been giving Laynie lists of words or sentences and saying them with her mouth covered. Even with lists of 16 words or 10 sentences, Laynie has been getting 100% right with only a few repetitions. It's too easy for her!

Laynie has been doing one open set task every week, the WASP list (sounds, syllables, and simple words that cover all of the sounds of English). K says something, mouth covered, and Laynie repeats it. This was pretty hard at first, but Laynie just finished the first list of 25 sounds/words, and she's on to the next list. She is really improving with being able to say what she hears. She uses some strategies that K and I have taught her, as well as a "cheat sheet" that K made for her during therapy showing groups of sounds that are similar, to narrow down her guesses to the right kinds of sounds. Sometimes her brain knows the sound and doesn't tell her what it means--she can say it but not know what she's saying. She is doing just amazing with this task. It's the same one K initially thought would be too hard for Laynie even to attempt, which she almost didn't include in the original assessment.

Yesterday Laynie did all open set tasks, which is what she will be doing in rehab from now on. She did the whole first WASP list, and she learned five new sounds/words from the next list. She whipped through them! Then she did a new task, which K warned would be much harder. She was going to say a short sentence and Laynie would repeat it. Or at least try to figure out how many words were in the sentence--whatever she could do.

K said, "I saw him." Laynie said, "I saw cat." K and I nearly fell out of our chairs! After we had recovered and K said the sentence again, emphasizing the last word, Laynie said, "I saw hat." She heard the /h/. Of course then she started trying to guess, thinking of all the H words she knows instead of really listening. When she got back to listening, she got the whole sentence right. Wow.

Then K added a word to the sentence: "I saw him yesterday." They worked on strategies like first focusing on how many syllables, then on a specific syllable, then on the beginning of that syllable, etc. Laynie got the word. K added another word: "I saw him yesterday afternoon." Using the same strategies, Laynie got it.

Then her hour was up! K explained that they will do another open set task in their next session, where K will show Laynie a sentence with a word or phrase missing, and Laynie will listen and fill in the blank. I'm sure she will do a great job.

Aren't you impressed?

I'm working on uploading some videos to YouTube of Laynie and me doing some listening therapy over the weekend. Hopefully I can add a blog post with those videos soon.