Auditory Processing In Children

Learning Issues Undermined By APD

Different Cases, Same Problem
While every student presents differently -- due to differing IQs, personality traits, prior interventions, educational experience, and a host of other factors -- many reading and learning difficulties are caused by the same problem, namely, an inability to process language efficiently. This is most easily seen in:

• Weak listening comprehension. An inability to follow multi-step instruction and/or to follow the teacher in class and/or to deal comfortably with background noise and/or an exhausting school day.


• Poor reading skills. An inability to sound out words, i.e., to pick up the phonemes, the sounds inside words, required for natural reading.

Language is incredibly complex, particularly the English language. The processing skills required to absorb the language in its various forms are demanding. Not surprisingly, many students fall short.

This is why auditory processing problems lie at the heart of so many reading and learning issues. Left untreated, these difficulties can be a lifetime affliction.

Auditory Processing Disorder
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a complex problem. The term is used by many people, in very different ways. Auditory processing is a term used to describe what happens when your brain recognizes and interprets the sounds around you. Humans hear when energy that we recognize as sound travels through the ear and is changed into electrical information that can be interpreted by the brain. The "disorder" part of auditory processing disorder means that something is adversely affecting the processing or interpretation of the information.

Children with auditory processing problems often do not recognize subtle differences between sounds in words, even though the sounds themselves are loud and clear. For example, if a teacher says "Canada is north of us" may sound to a child with APD like "Cambia is naught of us." It is these kinds of problems are more likely to occur when a person with APD is in a noisy environment or when he or she is listening to complex information.

APD Impact on Learning
Strong auditory processing in children is heavily correlated to grades, reading, homework behavior and enjoyment of learning. It is a critical skill that underpins all learning.

The consequences of auditory processing disorder on early learning are relatively obvious. If your child is not hearing you or his/her teachers or peers clearly, learning will be delayed. It also impacts expressive language -- vocabulary, articulation and relating stories -- often referred to as a language processing disorder.
Language processing disorder

Over time almost all children with auditory processing disorder learn to listen more accurately, but only at great cost. They learn that they can process more accurately if they concentrate intently. There are two major problems with this coping strategy:

• Thinking while listening is weakened. The need to concentrate on listening means that your child has limited capacity to think about what he/she is hearing, to connect what is being said to other knowledge, to make inferences, and most importantly to think critically. This is called metacognition -- the ability to self-correct and analyze while listening or reading. Metacognition is a critical learning skill that is the difference between a pass or fail in high school.

• Learning is exhausting. If your child is working hard in class just to understand the words a teacher is saying, think how exhausting that must be; and all day long. Understandably, this exhaustion factor makes it hard to enjoy learning and difficult to maintain focus. Not surprisingly, auditory processing disorder in children is often diagnosed as an inattentive attention deficit disorder.
  Treatment for attention deficit disorder

Auditory processing disorder also impacts phonological awareness -- hearing the individual sounds that make up words -- an essential reading skill. In fact, the vast majority of reading problems stem from an underlying auditory processing difficulty.
Auditory processing and reading

Auditory Processing Programs

Helping children with auditory processing problems has become a lot easier since the launch of Fast ForWord software a few years ago. It isolates and exercises the various components of auditory processing individually, helping children and adults overcome APD and its varied symptoms.
Our treatment for auditory processing disorder

Note APD goes by many other names. Sometimes it is referred to as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). Other common names are auditory perception problem, auditory comprehension deficit, central auditory dysfunction, central deafness, and so-called "word deafness." Symptoms of auditory processing disorder vary by age.