What is auditory processing disorder (APD)?

The process of listening and understanding speech and other sounds involves more than just our ears. In order to understand speech, particularly in noisy environments, our ears and brain must work effectively together.

In most hearing disorders it is the ears that are impacting on whether a child can listen and learn. However, in some cases, a child may still struggle to hear and understand speech even though they have “normal” hearing.

While a hearing assessment will tell us how loud a sound must be before your child can hear it, it does not tell us what happens after that. An auditory processing disorder occurs when the ear and the brain are not communicating effectively together. If your child is diagnosed with an Auditory Processing Disorder it means they cannot process what they hear the same as other children.

Why is it important for your child to attend this assessment?

Children who have weaknesses in auditory processing might benefit from auditory remediation and a remote microphone system. Early intervention can help facilitate the development of auditory processing and ensure children with APD can have adequate auditory processing skills to reach their full potential at school.

Functional listening challenges (auditory processing difficulties) are often linked to language, reading and attention difficulties and are common in children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Auditory processing skills in children with ASD can vary widely and studies have found that children with ASD find it particularly difficult to process and understand speech in noisy environments like classrooms and parties, and they can struggle to pay attention to auditory stimuli such as the teacher’s voice. Auditory processing difficulties are thought to contribute to academic underachievement in children with ASD, and may aggravate other challenges with inattention, hyperactivity, oppositional behaviour, anxiety and abnormal tolerance for sound/busy, stimulating environments. 

What happens in an APD assessment? What tests do we perform?

During the appointment your audiologist will perform a thorough case history which will help the audiologist identify which situations your child is having difficulty in and which tests to perform. This will also aid in the development of your child’s personalized management plan. Before APD testing it is important to rule out any hearing loss that may be the cause of your child’s difficulties and therefore a diagnostic auditory assessment will be performed. This will include otoscopy, tympanometry, acoustic reflex testing and a pure tone audiometry assessment and appropriate referral for medical treatment if required.

The audiologist will direct your child through a series of tests to determine if your child can listen to speech in the presence of background noise, detect subtle differences in sounds and fill in missing parts of words. In these tests your child will simply have to indicate if they can hear certain sounds or speech. To participate in an auditory processing assessment your child must be able to communicate and understand language, have normal hearing and be 6 years of age or older.

The assessment requires 2 appointments of 1.5 hours each. Auditory processing consists of several skills and these appointments allow time for our audiologist to assess each of these skills. We strive to ensure the tests are engaging and we allow time for breaks as needed.