Many of us may have heard of Auditory Processing Disorder or otherwise know as Central Auditory Processing Disorder.
But what is it?
The first illusion that you must understand is that Auditory Processing Disorder is NOT a problem with the ears.
It is in fact an issue with the processing of sounds from the ears to the brain which causes trouble perceiving certain sounds.
So a child with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), may hear a ‘d’ sound as a ‘g’ sound for example.
This can cause particular problems if the child is in a noisy environment, or there is a lot of background noise. When a child reaches school age, a child with Auditory Processing Disorder will struggle greatly with this. As background noise is constant within a school environment. This can make it very difficult for the child with Auditory Processing Disorder to process what the teacher is saying.
Auditory Processing Disorder creates a great many problems for a child. As it affects their overall ability to learn language.
When a child with Auditory Processing Disorder is very young, it will affect their ability to learn speech. As they grow older it will also affect their ability to read.
With many languages in the world today they are alphabetic languages. Therefore, each letter of the alphabet produces a particular sound. And learning these particular sounds is what teaches children to read particular words. A child with Auditory Processing Disorder will struggle to determine which sounds go with which letters.
Many researchers are beginning to find, more and more that the difficulty for children with Auditory Processing Disorder is not with hearing the sounds, but with handling those sounds. Which, in turn, causes massive difficulties when learning language.
These difficulties range from:
- Difficulty hearing what is being said to them.
- Difficulty recreating sounds via speech.
- Difficulty using phonetics when learning to read certain words.
- Difficulty with auditory working memory, struggling to hold the information in their mind.
- Difficulty with rapid auditory naming.
Difficulty with rapid auditory naming means; a child with Auditory Processing Disorder may even struggle with quickly being able to recall and state the name for something.
All these problems can in turn lead to severe struggles in life. Not only can it cause educational problems, but it can also cause problems with social interaction.
Making and retaining friendships can be difficult, as a child bullying can occur. And doing general day to day things, such as dealing with a customer service person in a shop or ordering something can be incredibly difficult.
Sadly children with Auditory Processing Disorder can, as a consequence, suffer with sensory issues. Click here to read my previous article on ‘What Are Sensory Problems?’
Because of the complexity of symptoms in a child with Auditory Processing Disorder. It can often get mis-diagnosed for Autism, ADHD, Anxiety or even depression.
Causes
It is not fully known what all the possible causes of Auditory Processing Disorder could be. But it is believed that it could be caused by numerous things, such as:
- Head trauma.
- Auditory under-stimulation at a very young age.
- Lead Poisoning.
- Chronic ear infections.
Fortunately there are therapies and techniques that can help. Good speech and language therapy is a vital for a child with Auditory Processing Disorder.
Keeping background noise to a minimum is important. And there is a device called a frequent modulation devise that helps limit background noise and can be extremely beneficial to a child with Auditory Processing Disorder. Especially when in the classroom. But they are quite expensive, however they are know to have good results.
Click here for more information or to buy an FM system.