The Auditory Perception Test for Hearing Impaired (APTHI) assesses functional auditory skills that are the building blocks for language and academic development. The test is aimed at children with at least a moderate-to-severe hearing loss, aged three and over, but may also be used for other children who have non-typical language development.
The auditory performance profile may be a useful guide for parents and professionals to monitor linguistic progress or to ‘red flag’ when progress is not being made to support referral for cochlear implantation, additional support or hearing aid modifications.
The guidebook aims to give the practitioner (audiologist, SLT, TOD, educational audiologist, AVT) the underlying knowledge of auditory and speech and language development in order to be better able to administer, analyse and interpret the APTHI results and to develop the subsequent intervention plans.
The book comes as part of a package including all test materials, a third edition manual including a guide to doing the test and results of the reliability and validity of the test, and access to a companion website. The website includes short video clips and power point presentations which are referred to throughout the book. These act as a visual demonstration of the text which is extremely useful.
I found the guidebook to be very well-written, well-referenced, well-laid-out and an excellent summary of how children learn to listen, develop language and then apply language for reading and academic achievement. I would highly recommend this book for all paediatric audiologists, even if they do not intend to administer the test themselves. I would rate it, as a package, as 4/5 but may have scored it higher if I had performed the test on patients to assess it clinically. It is value for money if the test is to be used in the clinic, but less so if purchased for the guidebook alone.
