AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER

An Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) refers to deficits in the recognition and interpretation of sounds that may be associated with conditions such as Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder. Children with APD often do not recognize subtle differences between the sounds in words and exhibit poor listening skills, language difficulties, and deficits in attention. APD is a receptive language disorder. It refers to difficulties in the decoding and storing of auditory information (typically incoming verbal messages). Children who have auditory processing problems are a heterogeneous group of people who have difficulty using auditory information to communicate and learn. This involves a set of problems that occur with different listening tasks.

Speech and Language Support
Efficient auditory processing is the foundation for oral communication.
The five primary components of auditory processing are:

1) Retention and Organization: This component involves the ability to listen to something, remember it, and repeat it in the original order. Difficulties in this area limit a person’s ability to follow directions, to remember information, and to retell or describe events. People with deficit retention and organization skills often have trouble in completing tasks at home, in school, or at work.
2) Auditory Discrimination: This component enables the listener to differentiate among auditory signals. On an advanced level, auditory discrimination helps a person hear differences among speech patterns in conversation as well as in pitch changes. Poor discrimination is apparent when a person misunderstands what he hears, confuses one word for another, misarticulates various sounds in his own speech, or experiences difficulty in learning to read.
3) Sequencing; This component is directly related to the ability to follow directions. Since most of us, especially students, spend a great deal of our day following directions in school or at work, disturbances in this are usually fairly obvious. Inattentiveness, incomplete paperwork, and learning difficulties may be directly related to poor sequencing skills.
4) Conceptualization: Conceptualizing auditory messages enables the listener to give meaning to what he hears. Effective conceptualization is crucial to abstract concepts such as time, direction and space. Disturbances in this area can create the impression that a student is disorganized and unable to adapt to new situations. Such a student is apt to be considered inflexible, concrete, and confused.
5) Synthesis of Information: This auditory processing component is fundamental for
pulling together all the language skills that are necessary to communicate effectively.
These skills include the ability to learn to read, to anticipate spoken messages, to grasp
the main idea of a conversation or story, and to fill in missing information in a
conversation.

Information for Teachers, Counselors, and Parents by Joan Altimore, Central Bucks (PA) School District, 9/2001