Allison Audiology Provides Auditory Processing Disorder Testing
Approximately 15% of school-aged children (2.5 million) in the U.S. have auditory processing disorder, or APD, according to the Hearing Health Foundation, while about 15% of American veterans also experience APD and its neurological consequences from blast exposure.
Most hearing assessments show individuals with APD to have normal or near normal hearing, making it difficult to detect. The effect it has on the cognitive and social development of children, impeding language development and academic progress as well as TIA, stroke, tumors, epilepsy, and other neurological issues in causes, has made it imperative that Allison Audiology and Hearing Aid Center also test for auditory processing disorder.
What Is APD?
Auditory processing disorder is a condition that involves how the brain processes speech. Though a person might demonstrate normal hearing during a hearing test, APD involves a coordination issue between the auditory pathway and the central auditory system of the brain.
A person with APD hears what someone is saying, but they struggle to decipher the meaning of what was said. When conversations take place in an environment with background noise, when there are multiple conversations at the same time, or when not facing the speaker, individuals with APD struggle to detect the subtle differences between words like cat, bat, and that, seventy and seventeen, and thousands of other similar words.
Four categories of processing skills that are limited or lacking in people who struggle with auditory processing disorder, according to Understood.com, include:
- Auditory discrimination: noticing, comparing, and distinguishing between separate sounds
- Auditory figure-ground discrimination: focusing on the important sounds in a noisy setting
- Auditory memory: recalling what they heard (short or long term)
- Auditory sequencing: understanding and recalling the order of sounds and words
APD leads most people to assume that they or their loved one is experiencing hearing loss, but when hearing tests turn up normal, identifying the cause becomes a struggle. This is where an assessment by a hearing expert who is also an APD specialist makes the difference.
Who is affected by APD?
Auditory processing disorder is most prominent in school-aged children as a disorder related to their development.
It often runs together with dyslexia and can be misdiagnosed as ADHD or vice versa, as well as being a common secondary diagnosis in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD, or autism).
The small percentage of adults who experience APD often have hearing loss and/or cognitive decline issues. Blast exposure, resulting in neurological disorders, and brain injuries in an estimated 15% of military veterans are also associated with APD.
Signs/Symptoms Of Auditory Processing Disorder
“My kid is kind of out of touch, asks me to repeat myself a lot, and can’t follow a simple set of directions.” While it’s not uncommon for kids to ignore their parents periodically or to have a short attention span, if the above statement is an ongoing description of your child, auditory processing disorder (APD) could be the cause.
The Most Common Signs of Auditory Processing Disorder Include:
- Slow to respond when spoken to.
- Strange response to questions or conversations.
- Frequently asking the speaker to repeat what they said.
- Completing some, but not all steps in a series of instructions.
- Difficulty with spelling.
- Withdrawal in the classroom or during social activities.
- Extreme fatigue in the classroom or during social activities.
- Improved understanding when looking at the speaker in a one-on-one conversation.
In addition to struggling to detect the subtle differences between words, a person experiencing APD might hear the words in a sentence out of order or scrambled. For example, “How are the chair and couch alike?” could be interpreted as “How the cow and hair are like?”
Diagnosing and Treating Auditory Processing Disorder
One of the biggest struggles for parents, doctors, and psychologists in relation to auditory processing disorder (APD) is that it is similar to hearing loss. Consequently, the first step in diagnosing auditory processing disorder involves ruling out hearing loss as a cause. Only when properly diagnosed can the best course of treatment for APD be put in place.
When a hearing test shows normal to near normal hearing, our next step involves a Hearing Handicap Inventory, which provides subjective input like identifying which environments they struggle the most in, as well as the words and phrases they struggle with.
Parents, teachers, or other adults provide necessary information to assist with diagnosis of young children. Audiologists also use additional tests to diagnose APD, including:
- Auditory Figure-Ground Testing (speech understanding with background noise)
- Auditory Closure Testing (the capacity to “fill in the gaps” of speech)
- Dichotic Listening Testing (ability to understand meaningful speech that happens simultaneously)
- Temporal Processing Testing (capacity to distinguish between similar speech sounds like “mat” and “pat”)
- Binaural Interaction Testing (ability to identify the direction of sounds and localizing them in a room)
Treatment Options for APD in Houston, Texas
Should a child show auditory processing deficits after testing, then convenient, at-home treatment options will be discussed to help with issues involving sound distinction, recall capacity, sorting out sounds in noisy environments, improving focus during conversation, and other processing challenges.
These compensatory strategies provide your child with the building blocks to help them overcome the condition in order to improve school and workplace communication. If language development has been impacted by APD, speech and language therapy options might include:
- Boosting Phonological Awareness Skills
- The Use of Inference in Speech
- Vocabulary Enhancement
- Comprehension Improvement Strategies
- Social Communication Skills
Having helped a number of challenging APD cases, our team of audiologists are among the trusted experts in the region when it comes to needing the help of an APD specialist. Depending on the needs of the child, assistive devices may be recommended to assist in understanding while limiting the impacts of background noise.
Patient Stories
"If you are concerned about your hearing and you do nothing about it, you will live your life always concerned about your hearing."
Suffering from hearing loss since he was 7 years old, Billy has endured a lifetime of hearing loss troubles and mishaps.
From punctured eardrums to fluid building behind his eardrums, his luck was falling short and he was concerned his hearing would never improve.
“I felt comfortable and at ease. The people were nice and were willing to take the time to adjust the hearing aids for me and show me how to maintain them.”
“People were always saying I told you that already. I was missing conversations. My mind would have to decode sometimes what someone would say…
“My audiologist was so knowledgeable it made me feel secure and I knew I had come to the right place.”
“I was having to ask people to repeat things and I found myself turning my TV volume up more and more.
“I was worried that wearing a hearing aid would make me look old…
Don’t wait, it will be a change you would not expect – Debbie’s Story
Debbie first noticed she had an issue with her hearing back in 2009 as her hearing began to affect her day-to-day life.…
I can hear nature sounds & understand conversations better, especially with my grandchildren.
Francine has suffered with hearing problems for years due to tinnitus. As it quickly began to escalate, she realized that she needed urgent attention and soon after she came across Allison Audiology…
Fred first visited an ENT clinic to discuss the tinnitus he was experiencing from time to time.
Following his visit, he was surprised to find out that he needed hearing aids and his hearing was in poor condition…
You cannot find a better place to address your hearing challenges. The staff members treat you like family and will go the extra mile to help you.
Frida has spent much of her life struggling with hearing loss. While it was ignored for many years, it gradually began to affect her everyday life and soon she found it hard to socialise with others...
It’s a very clean office with efficient people. You will never be rushed.
While John’s hearing loss was very sudden, he has been amazed at the difference his hearing aids have made to his hearing:
“I never thought I would need hearing aids but am happy to have them now. I could not hear in a busy environment, but now I can...
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