Auditory Memory Club 3.6

The Auditory Memory Club application for iPad is a tool developed to support the enhancement of auditory memory skills in children. Created by Barbara Fernandes, a licensed and certified speech-language pathologist with extensive experience, including authoring over 50 mobile applications, the program aims to address challenges associated with auditory memory deficits.

Impairments in auditory memory can significantly affect a child's academic performance as well as their ability to perform everyday activities. Listening skills, auditory information processing, and recall are crucial components of learning environments (Mense, Debney and Druce, 2006). This application approaches these issues through four main activities: “I Say You Do,” “What Was That,” “Remember for Amber,” and “Let’s Put it in Order.” Each activity offers customizable settings to accommodate individual listening levels, including options to add background noise and adjust recall delays from 1 to 100 seconds. The platform supports use by single or multiple children within a session.

The first activity, “I Say You Do,” involves guided tasks where an adult supervises the child, who follows verbal instructions such as “clap your hands,” “raise your arms,” or “pretend you are eating a hamburger.” The difficulty increases automatically with successive correct responses, allowing for an adaptive challenge. The second activity, “What Was That?”, requires the child to listen to environmental sounds—such as rain, a horse, or a duck—and identify them after a delay period.

In the third activity, “Remember for Amber,” an animated character named Amber asks the child to memorize a list of words presented visually or verbally. The child does not need to recall the items in order but must remember all of them for later recall. The final activity, “Let’s Put it in Order,” has children arrange words or phrases in the sequence they were previously spoken by the narrator. The complexity escalates as the child demonstrates proficiency.

Each activity includes an introductory guide that users can disable through settings, aiding both children and facilitators in understanding task objectives. Furthermore, the application offers trilingual support—English, Spanish, and Portuguese—enhancing accessibility. Progress tracking is facilitated through a comprehensive report center featuring visual graphs and the possibility to print certificates of achievement.