My essential question is: How often are children with Auditory Processing Disorders misdianosed to have a Attention Deficit Disorder?

1. What is Auditory Processing Disorder?

2. What is Attention Deficit Disorder?

3. What is the occurance of APD diagnosis in elementary age children?

4. What is the occurance of ADD dianosis in elemenary age children?

5. What are the most common types of therapy techniques available for ApD?

6. What are the most common types of therapy techniques available for ADD?

7. What do experts think happens to a child w/APD that is treated with an ADD dianosis?

I am beginning to think that it will be difficult to pinpoint how often children with APD are misdiagnosed. Afterall, if there is an occurance of misdiagnosis, there is no way to know for sure because there are probable tons of unidentified cases of misdiagnosis. Therefore, I was wondering if I should change it?

Maybe I could attempt to answer this question: What are the reprecusions of a child with APD being diagnosed with ADD?

What are the areas of professional practice that capture my interest? With regard to the general topic, what would be an essential question for me be? What do I really know about this topic? What don’t I know about this topic?

It is really hard to pick a specific area that captures my interest because I find everything so fascinating. I think it would be much easier to pick an area that doesn’t interest me, but that isn’t the question, is it. I really enjoy areas about development. I know that really narrows things down. I like to see the commonalities among normal developing children then pinpointing an area in a disordered child that isn’t developing as well. I guess I like the investigative stuff. Language disorders have always fascinated me. I don’t know why because everyone else in CD seems to hate the language classes. In addition, we haven’t really gotten into a lot of the different types of language disorders. But, as far as the normal language development goes, it just makes sense to me. After I learn something new in a language development class, I think the information falls into a common sense category. It’s like I think that I should have known the information if I would have thought about it before hand. Another area of professional development that is really beginning to interest me is Auditory Processing Disorders. This fascination began when I attended a meeting about it at WVSHA. It was so interesting when they talked about how different a normal developing brain works from the brain of someone with an Auditory Processing Disorder. The problem is that I do not know a lot of information about Auditory Processing Disorders. I know that people with APD cannot process information as quickly because their neurons are not firing as fast. I also know that there is a controversial therapy program called FAST FORWARD that attempts to increase the speed at which the neurons fire. In our online meeting yesterday, Mary and I were discussing weather APD was a learning disorder or not. I mentioned that I thought that it is or should be considered a learning disorder because these children cannot learn as fast because of the slow firing of neurons. Neither one of us knew exactly how APD is considered in the school system. Lekei helped to give me an idea for a research question. She said that I should try to find information about how many children with APD are diagnosed with ADD. This seemed like a good question because children with APD get active or lose interest in something because they do not understand the information. There is little that I know and a lot that I don’t know about APD, but it really interests me so I thought that I would take Lekei’s suggestion about my research question. I want to know more about APD and Lekei’s suggestion seems like it will be interesting and fun to learn about. Therefore, my essential question is: How often are children with Auditory Processing Disorders misdiagnosed with ADD?

Question: How often are Children with APD misdiagnosed with ADD?

How can I continue to forge my professional and academic development? How might I inquire (research) into my learning in an ongoing manner? How might my professional and academic development practice be informed by my ongoing research? How do I respond to ongoing research? How do I respond to the opportunity for inquiry? How do I meet my own learning needs?

I think that continuing academic development after college is not a privilege or an option, I think it is a must. In today’s ever changing society, we do not have the opportunity to decide if we should or shouldn’t continue learning. We have to continue to discover new things or we will be lost in the profession that we spent so many years studying. New ideas, research, and data develop daily. In addition, old practices become obsolete. It is important for people to consume new information to ‘stay on top of their game’, especially in a field like speech pathology. When you are in a profession that deals with serving the public in some manner, it is your duty to provide them with the best possible service. You cannot provide good service if you do not stay informed with the newest developments. With continual consumption of knowledge, you are able to make informed decisions about professional situations. Now that I have mentioned the importance of persistent learning, I will provide a few ways to continue development. When I am in the ‘real world’ working as a speech pathologist, I think that I will gather information by subscribing to professional journals, attending professional workshops, and communicating with other professionals. I think that you have to have a desire to be good at what you do in order to continue professional and academic development. I have that desire. I want to be the best SLP that I can, and I will be unable to do that if I do not stay informed. To me, reading is the most important way to continue learning. You can attend professional workshops and take new classes, but you will not have time to attend meetings all the time if you want to work. Therefore, I think that reading newspapers, magazines, and professional journals is the best way to obtain new information. I also think that communicating with inter- and intraprofessionals will be a great way to gather new information. It isn’t a difficult way to obtain information either. All you have to do is talk to them, either at work, on the phone, or by exchanging e-mails. Communication with professionals can be a reciprocal way of learning as well. A colleague may provide you with something interesting and new, and you may be able to do the same thing for them.

In reply to the questions about my performance on inquiry I have to be honest, at this point it isn’t very good. I am not the best at uncovering needed information. To be blunt, I am awful. I can find articles that relate and maybe even answer my questions, but I can never find an abundance of good information. After hours of online searching, I end up with one article to work with. When I am given an assignment that requires research, I get nervous. I am scared that I will be unable to find what I am looking for. After looking into the assignment, I get frustrated because I know that there is so much to find on the Internet and I can’t find anything. I guess that I met my needs because I search until I find what I need, but it takes hours. I am hoping to discover the secret to the Internet in this class.