The Truth about Auditory Processing Disorders
By Janell Schicker
Dynamic
Learning Services
Is your child bright, yet struggling in school?
It is possible your child may be experiencing auditory processing
issues. Auditory processing disorders (APD) are prevalent and
can be a significant factor or the entire reason that some children
struggle with schoolwork. In fact, dyslexia is a combination of
visual and auditory disorders although many people are only aware
of the visual component.
What is an auditory processing disorder?
APD is a disruption in the auditory nervous system that interferes
with the processing or understanding of auditory signals such
as sounds and speech. Auditory processing can be looked at as
an umbrella with a variety of skills beneath it. One of those
skill areas is auditory discrimination. Auditory discrimination
is the ability to hear sounds and sound changes in words. If you
hear the word “pop” you need to recognize that there
are three sounds and the first and third sound are the same. If
you change the word “pop” to “pup” a person
with good auditory discrimination skills will hear the middle
sound changed and can repeat the exact sound that was taken out
as well as the sound that replaced it. This skill is also referred
to as phonemic awareness and correlates directly with listening,
reading and spelling skills.
Children with auditory discrimination difficulties do not always
hear sounds in the correct order or as individual units. For example,
if they are asked to spell the word “plan” they may
write the word “pan” because they heard the ‘pl’
as ‘p’ and therefore did not hear the ‘l’.
This can obviously impact spelling skills. It affects reading
skills in the same way and therefore children with this issue
will sometimes reverse or omit letters. Problems occur with listening
as well. As an example “Go read a book” or “Go
read a pook” are the same sentence with one sound change.
However, one sound changed a meaningful sentence to one that is
not meaningful. Children that do not discriminate well often have
difficulty listening because they mishear words which affects
their comprehension and understanding while learning. These children
are sometimes misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) because they
learn to stop paying attention as they don’t understand
what is being said. Medication for this type of attention problem
will not be effective because the root cause is in sound discrimination.
Multiple ears infections and genetic predisposition are the two
main causes of this issue.
Another auditory processing skill is the ability to understand
speech and language when different auditory information is presented
to both ears at the same time. An example of this would be a student
talking on the right side of the child while the teacher is talking
on the left of the child. Having different stimuli coming in at
the same time is very confusing for some children and they will
have trouble grasping any of it.
Filtered speech relates to listening to muffled words. A person
with adequate processing skills that hears part of a word should
be able to “fill in the blanks” and know what the
word is even though they didn’t hear it in its entirety.
Some children with poor auditory skills can’t do this and
situations like teachers who don’t speak clearly or who
face the white board with their back to the students while talking
can significantly impact a child’s learning. Communicating
on the telephone can also be difficult for these students because
the auditory signals are not always clear and parts of the words
may be missing.
Auditory figure ground is the ability to hear and process adequately
in the presence of background noise. Students with auditory figure
ground difficulties have a great deal of trouble learning in a
noisy environment. These children learn better in a quiet environment
but unfortunately most circumstances in life are not quiet and
this can include homeschoolers. Even in the home environment other
siblings, pets, the dishwasher or washing machine and the telephone
can all be disruptive to learning.
Listening and reading comprehension fall under the umbrella of
auditory processing skills as well. The premise for comprehension
is the left side of the brain hears or reads words and the right
side pictures the information. If the left side is not adequately
perceiving information then the right side cannot effectively
picture it which leads to comprehension, direction following,
organization and memory issues. In addition to not discriminating
well, many children do not picture while listening and reading
which further affects learning.
Students must make a movie in their head while reading in order
to comprehend and remember what they have read. Children who think
reading is “boring” or who have to reread information
several times to understand it are often not picturing adequately.
These children typically don’t perform well on tests either
although some will do well on shorter quizzes because there is
less information to retain. Children who have difficulty writing
sentences, stories or reports are often not visualizing well either.
In order to effectively write, students must see the sentence
or story in their head prior to writing it. The same applies to
organization. Children cannot be organized if they cannot see
in their head the progression of steps or tasks that are expected
of them.
APD is not outgrown and can be confusing to parents and teachers
alike as often students exhibit inconsistencies in schoolwork.
They are often labeled lazy or unmotivated. It is important to
understand that students with APD must work two or three times
harder than the average child and still sometimes or often receive
poor grades that do not reflect their true effort. Sometimes children
will attend to a task at school and do very well in the morning.
However, because they have to exert so much effort they may be
unable to perform well in the afternoon making it appear as if
they are unmotivated. These children are often extremely tired
at the end of a school day.
Children who have this issue tend to be high average to above
average in regard to intelligence but it can span the range of
intelligence levels. Sometimes students will do well in school
until somewhere between first and seventh grade, and then at some
point their efforts, motivation, grades and self-esteem can plummet.
It appears as if the issues are becoming progressively worse but
in actuality the schoolwork is becoming progressively harder with
less hands-on and visual cues. Children with auditory deficits
perform much better when they can learn with kinesthetic (hands-on)
and visual cues. The performance of these students will dramatically
drop when they find themselves with a teacher that lectures the
entire class period and they must rely solely on the auditory
channel for learning. These students also perform very poorly
in second language classes such as Spanish or French.
Many students with APD have received regular tutoring services
which is not recommended for them prior to receiving learning
therapies specifically for APD. A case in point is a student we
will call Darren. Darren was tutored since the first grade because
every year he needed a boost. When he began receiving grades he
always earned C’s regardless of the amount of time he spent
studying. He was not an independent learner even after receiving
tutoring services for six years of his young life. When Darren
was in the sixth grade he received therapy services that specifically
treated APD. Darren completed therapy in a few months and received
straight A’s independently for the first time in his life.
He went on to seventh grade and he continued to receive straight
A’s independently. Not all children that receive treatment
earn straight A’s but the high majority of them do significantly
better in school if they receive the correct treatment.
Depending on which treatment is chosen those age two through adult
can receive services for APD and exhibit great benefit. Unfortunately,
there is a lack of awareness in many areas about APD and its symptoms.
Therefore, many people suffer and go undiagnosed. Many students
are put on medications for attention, anxiety and depression which
do not address the root cause of the issue. Others suffer with
consistently poor grades for a condition that is treatable. Children
who are two or three years old and exhibit delayed or disordered
speech and language skills are often dealing with APD issues.
Addressing these issues early can reduce or eliminate learning
problems and self-esteem issues down the road. For children with
APD the correct treatment can be life changing.
