Fast ForWord Auditory Processing Software

Fast ForWord is brain-training software that targets auditory processing disorder (APD), the most common cause of reading and learning difficulties.

Developed by world-renowned neuroscientists, Fast ForWord harnesses brain plasticity—the brain’s ability to respond to exercise and improve function—to target auditory processing delays and help children become better listeners, learners, and readers.

Tackling APD At Its Source

APD causes a range of learning and reading delays. Fast ForWord was developed to remediate these processing delays and thereby develop reading and learning efficiency.

Founding scientist and cognitive researcher, Dr. Paula Tallal, was one of the first to connect reading to language processing delays. Her early research studies found an almost perfect correlation between struggling readers and children who could not accurately identify and sequence sounds at high speed. It makes sense. Children who cannot pick out the small sounds, the phonemes, that make up words will struggle to read.

This discovery led to the idea of Fast ForWord for auditory processing. Dr. Tallal and 3 other founding neuroscientists reasoned that strengthening auditory processing through stimulation would significantly improve language, learning, and reading. They spent the next 20 years developing a series of cognitive and processing exercises, launching Fast ForWord as an APD program.

A second chance to learn how to process language

The concept behind Fast ForWord is simple. It finds the student’s processing level and then builds speed and complexity in tiny, incremental steps, much like how a child learns to hit a baseball: dad pitches the ball slowly to start, then speeds up.

Students make hundreds of sequencing and sound discrimination decisions in quick succession. It adds speed and complexity, building to the auditory processing efficiency required for reading.

This approach differs from how children learn language in the real world. When they are babies, parents instinctively talk slowly, but once they are 2-3 years of age, everyone talks at natural language speed. If a child is not processing at natural language speed, too bad. His window to improve auditory processing, the foundation for all future learning, is closed.

Fast ForWord gives these children a second chance. It slows language down and helps them build auditory processing skills at their own pace. That accelerates all learning, including language comprehension – vocabulary and syntax – through listening.

Fast ForWord addresses auditory processing delays by first building a cognitive foundation (2-3 months), then moving into a reading series with elementary, middle, and high school-level programs.

Neuroscience principles

Fast ForWord is brain training software for CAPD, based on established neuroscience concepts, that promotes improved brain function in a relatively short period. These principles help create new neural connections and improve learning.

Fast ForWord Research For APD

Over 70,000 students, mainly struggling readers, have participated in highly scrutinized scientific studies of Fast ForWord, and 700+ scientific articles have been published, many focusing on APD. The study results have been overwhelmingly positive.

Fast ForWord Auditory Processing Program Goals By Age

Fast ForWord auditory processing software is actually a series of programs, each targeting a different phase in the learning cycle and aimed at different ages. They share the same cognitive research and neuroscience principles, but the exercises look different.  This is partly because the exercises are age-appropriate, but also because the goals differ.

• For elementary age, it’s about learning to process language efficiently – to help with listening in class, attentiveness, and phonological awareness for reading.
• For older children, the target is automaticity – to enable thinking while reading and thinking while listening.

While all students work on the same skill sets, the path through our exercises varies greatly from child to child, based on age and ability. The exercises are adaptive. Children progress quickly in skills they already have, while spending more time in areas they find challenging.

For children with APD, language processing and related skills tend to be challenging at first – processing, working memory, attentiveness, and sequencing. Most will also find that the pre-reading skills take a month or two to develop.

Note: middle school and older children tend to spend less time on the purely cognitive exercises – it’s a longer distance to learn phonological awareness than it is to automate phonological awareness. Our average APD student needs 6-8 months on Fast ForWord auditory processing software. Here’s what to expect from our language and reading programs for APD by age.

Elementary Age

Most learning skills improve with practice. This is a challenge for children with APD, as the lack of crystal clear language inputs impedes their ability to develop.  And so in most cases, APD children with a language processing delay, also have delays in working memory, sustained attention, and phonemic awareness.

Our APD program, Fast ForWord, assumes these related skill gaps on day one and presents exercises that work on these skills, in isolation and together.  To be effective, a reading program for APD needs to address:

• Delayed processing – accuracy and speed of processing
• Attention gaps – stamina, ability to focus, distractedness
• Working memory deficit
• Weak phonological awareness and phonics
• Limited vocabulary, grammar, and/or spelling skills
• Reluctance or frustration from reading

Many children with APD use memorization of long word lists to overcome their difficulty with sounding words out, But eventually, the list expands to the point it is not manageable. At that point (generally 3rd to 5th grade), without an intervention to help decoding, there is the risk of a negative connection developing to reading and learning that can last a lifetime.

This is where our online APD programs help. If we can help children overcome their processing delays, if we can shorten the learn-to-read phase and make reading easier, a much more positive attitude to reading can develop. This has its own set of rewards.

Elementary Age APD Program Protocols

Our software takes a multi-pronged approach to making learning and reading easier for children with APD. It starts with language processing and related cognitive skills, and language dexterity – vocabulary, syntax, and spelling.  This all helps develop reading fluency, which in turn leads to our last exercise phase, reading comprehension.

Building cognitive skills is a repetitive process. Our exercises add speed and complexity with intensity in tiny increments.  To be effective, they require student participation and attention. For most children with APD, attentiveness is not a strength, and so the exercises need to be (and are) engaging. Our APD programs have a computer game feel, with reward sounds and counters that hold student attention and interest in every session.

As per the chart, elementary-age students typically need more time in the foundational Fsst ForWord auditory processing programs, Foundations I and Foundations II, than older children. Many APD children will complete at least one reading series program.

The most important goal here is creating a robust cognitive and language foundation for all future learning and reading growth.

Regarding reading, the key targets are the skills that make reading easier so that your child will be less resistant to reading, and more likely to put in the reading miles – the key to becoming a proficient reader.

Regarding learning, the goal is to make sure your child can keep up with the teacher and is less distracted by background noise. From there,  a habit of attentiveness and homework productivity can grow.

Middle & High School Children

The symptoms of APD are different in older children, and the academic ask is different.

For older children, the targets are automaticity in reading and listening, so that your child can think critically while reading or listening – not just comprehend in a literal way, but think about what is being read or said – connecting to prior knowledge, making inferences, etc.  For reading, most older APD children have the sounding-out skills needed for reading; they are just not automatic. As a result, our program for middle school children, teenagers (and adults) has a different track- starting with Elements I and Elements II.

By middle school, the focus is reading efficiency for “read to learn.”  Our programs for APD work on these symptoms of learning inefficiency:

• Drifts off in class
• Homework takes too long
• Slow reading
• Weak reading comprehension
• Lack of reading stamina
• Difficulty with testing

When listening and reading are automatic, less concentration is required, freeing up space for higher-level thinking,

Middle & High School Age APD Program Protocols

Our programs for children over 10 and teenagers start with Fast ForWord Elements I and II, which use the same science as Foundations I and II. The incremental difficulty in exercises is laddered more steeply so that students can move through the material faster, and they use more challenging vocabulary, spelling, and listening comprehension exercises.

Typically, older students complete a couple of programs in the Fast ForWord reading series, as shown in the table. Reading Levels 3 and Reading Comprehension are challenging programs that develop thinking while reading and metacognition, the ability to self-correct while reading.