Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Speech and Language Therapy Advice
AUDITORY MEMORY 2 – more complex games
Auditory memory is the ability to retain and recall what is heard. At first, the child will
only be able to remember very simple instructions, but his skills should extend to
longer complex instructions as he matures.
Auditory memory skills enable the child to:

attend and listen

follow instructions of increasing complexity

acquire knowledge

supply specific information

develop mature language skills, and

become literate
A child whose auditory memory skills do not develop may only remember and act on
“stand by the door” when given the instruction “put your book on my desk, get your
PE kit and stand by the door”.
IDEAS FOR DEVELOPING AUDITORY MEMORY
 Start at a simple level. Do not move on to a more complicated level until the child
is succeeding easily at the simple level. Take very small steps when increasing
the complexity of the games to allow the child to do well and feel positive.
 Give the whole instruction or sequence at once, rather than breaking it down into
separate parts (this will make the game easier). Only if a child is struggling should
the activity be simplified.
 Don’t give the child any accompanying visual clues, e.g. in the form of eye pointing
or gesture, or they are likely to use these to succeed instead of their memory. If a
child needs visual clues then you are working at too hard a level.
 Always remind the child to “Listen” before commencing each activity
 All these activities can be developed by adding a time delay element - increasing
the time that the child has to remember the information before acting on it.
 You can also increase the complexity of the tasks by changing other aspects of
the situation, eg. having a little more background noise, or asking the child to do
something whilst listening. This can make the activities much harder and you may
have to reduce the amount of information the child is asked to remember initially to
allow them to succeed.
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 You might need to talk to the child about what they are doing to try and remember.
Children will use different strategies, eg. counting on fingers, making a picture in
their head. Speak to your speech and language therapist if you would like some
help with this.
1.
Odd one Out
Child identifies odd one out of a list of spoken items. The number of items
should fit in with their memory level and might be related by:
category
rhyming
initial phoneme
2.
dog, cat, orange horse
cake, shoe, make, bake
ball, bush, box, toy
Chaining Games
Child and adult take turns to add an item and/or detail to an increasing list.
This might be a simple game of “I went shopping and I bought..”, or you can
ask the child to include descriptions.
Adult: “We went to the zoo and saw an elephant eating peanuts.”
Child: “We went to the zoo and saw an elephant eating peanuts
and a zebra with stripes” etc.
This idea can be adapted to similar games using food, furniture, clothes,
vehicles etc.
3.
Expanding Sentences
Child and adult take turns to increase the sentence length
“I watched T.V.”
“I watched T.V. on Wednesday”
“I watched T.V. on Wednesday and saw Neighbours”
“I watched T.V. on Wednesday and saw Neighbours with my mum”.
4.
Recalling Information
Adult produces a sentence and then asks child a question.
e.g. “I went to MacDonalds and ordered a Big Mac, a Coca Cola, some fries
and a doughnut ..... what did I buy?”. Child has to remember in correct
sequence.
5.
Recalling Specific Information
As above - but adult asks more complex questions
e.g. “what did I order first?” “what did I drink?” etc or “listen to these
numbers 9,7,6,4,2 ..... “what is the smallest number I said?”
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6.
Making Deductions
“Listen to these words - play, tree, meat, cow, poet ...... which one is a human
being?”
7.
Recall of Story Information
Adult reads a paragraph from child’s current reading book or a short story and
then asks the child questions about it.
8.
Riddles
Adult describes an object for the child to identify
e.g. “I’m thinking of a fruit that has a smooth skin, it has a stone in the
middle, it is juicy, it grows on a tree and is purple”. Adult continues giving
clues until child guesses correctly.
9.
Recall of Spoken Sequence
of digits
e.g. 5, 1, 6, 9
of colours e.g. red, blue, yellow, green
of animals e.g. cat, dog, fox, sheep etc.
10
Chinese Whispers
Adult gathers a small group of children together; a whisper is passed
around the circle and the original sentence is compared with the
final sentence.
11
Recall of Item
In a group each child tells his neighbour the name of
e.g. an animal, a bird, a fish at the beginning of a session, for them to recall at
the end of the session.
12.
Creating Stories
Pick a story theme and come up with a first line. Can you make up a story
together making sure that you stick to the theme.
13
Orienteering Type Activities
Child follows verbal directions from adult
e.g. “go to the gate, turn left, take 6 paces and return to me”.
14
Messages
Child takes messages of increasing complexity from one adult to another (prearranged if necessary!”)
15
Drawing to Instruction
Adult draws a basic outline
e.g. a house or a person, and child has to draw details as requested
e.g. give the house a white door and 3 green windows”.
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