The use of the Feather Squadron to identify auditory processing disorders in South African children : a comparative study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Accessibility to reliable and cost-effective assessment of auditory processing skills is limited in South Africa. With the development of tele-audiology, tools such as the Feather Squadron (FS) application have been developed to make this form of assessment more cost-effective and accessible. Purpose: To determine whether the performance on the FS correlates with performance on certain traditional assessment tasks, viz. Frequency Pattern Test (FPT) and Dichotic Digits Test (DDT), to establish its relevance in a South African population. Design: A retrospective, within-subject, comparative design was used. Study Sample: 66 South African participants, aged between 8 and 9 years of age and educated in English. Method: The FS, FPT and DDT were administered following a peripheral hearing assessment. The data were considered in two ways: Firstly, by comparing whether in each instance the participant had scored either at or below -2SD or whether they had scored above-2SD on the subtests of the FS and compared these scores to the same traditional tests, and secondly, by comparing the Z-scores obtained on the FS versus the Z-scores obtained on the same traditional test by applying a double arcsine transformation. Results: Using the -2SD criteria yielded no significant association when comparing the Dichotic Digits FS vs Dichotic Digits traditional test, or when comparing Tonal-Pattern Temporal Processing FS vs FPT in the humming or labelling conditions. Using the Z-score comparison, a statistically significant correlation was obtained when comparing the Tonal-Pattern Temporal Processing FS vs FPT, labelling condition and Dichotic Double-Words FS (linguistic) vs DDT. Conclusions: There is sufficient early evidence to suggest a statistically significant correlation between certain subtests of the FS with traditional tests of auditory processing to merit its use in the South African population. Further, using the broad pass/fail criteria of -2SD lacks the precision to adequately identify patterns of response and may need to be re-evaluated. Key Words: Feather Squadron, dichotic digits, frequency pattern, auditory processing, South Africa.