Test of Auditory Processing Skills 4th Edition (TAPS-4)

Purpose: Provide information about language processing and comprehension skills across three intersecting areas: phonological processing, auditory memory and listening comprehension
Age: 5-21 years
Time: 60-90 minutes, Individual Administration

The TAPS-4 provides information about language processing and comprehension skills across three intersecting areas: phonological processing, auditory memory and listening comprehension. These areas underpin the development of effective listening and communication skills, and are critical to the development of higher order language skills, including literacy skills.

The TAPS-4 Index subtests can be administered in one hour or less. Scaled scores are provided for subtests; standard scores are provided for cores and the overall score. Discrepancy scores allow comparison of performance across subtests.

Fourth Edition Updates:

• Three new subtests were added: Processing Oral Directions, Auditory Figure-Ground and Syllabic Blending
• The Auditory Comprehension and Auditory Reasoning subtests from the TAPS-3 have been combined and revised into one subtest - Auditory Comprehension
• New items were included in Word Discrimination, Phonological Deletion (previously Phonological Segmentation), Phonological Blending, Word Memory and Sentence Memory
• Scoring has been revised for all of the Auditory Memory Index subtests
• Norms have been fully updated
• Age range has been expanded
• Subtests werhave been reorganized into Index and Supplemental subtests, reducing testing burden and increasing flexibility in administration
• Features audio administration for the subtests (the first 6) in which proper pronunciation of speech sounds is critical, providing a greater degree of standardization and accuracy during the testing process.

The TAPS-4 has 11 subtests, organized into three indices:

Phonological Processing Index

• Word (Pair) Discrimination: assesses an individual’s ability to discriminate whether a given word pair is the same or different
• Phonological Deletion: assesses an individual’s ability to manipulate phonemes within words
• Phonological Blending: assesses an individual’s ability to synthesize a word given the individual phonemes
• Syllabic Blending (Supplemental): assesses an individual’s ability to synthesize a nonsense word given the individual syllables.

Auditory Memory Index

• Number Memory Forward: assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of numbers in the given order
• Word Memory: assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of words in the given order
• Sentence Memory: assesses an individual’s ability to recall a spoken sentence
• Number Memory Reversed (Supplemental): assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of numbers in the reverse order.

Listening Comprehension Index

• Processing Oral Directions (without background noise): Assesses an individual’s ability to process and recall oral directions when presented in quiet listening conditions
• Auditory Comprehension: assesses an individual’s ability to comprehend oral language at the sentence and narrative level, including literal recall, inference, and higher order language tasks such as idioms and figurative language
• Auditory Figure-Ground (Processing Oral Directions with background noise) (Supplemental): assesses an individual’s ability to process and recall oral directions when presented with competing background noise.