Research Paper: Audio Processing Disorder Auditory processing is a term that is used to describe the brain both recognizing and interpreting sounds around you. Auditory processing becomes a disorder when children cannot process the information the same way others do because both their brain and ears do not fully coordinate. Children with APD are not able to recognize the subtle differences between sounds in words, even if the words are pronounced clearly and loudly. What causes APD? The exact reason for this disorder is still unknown. Although it is unknown, the disorder is most commonly associated and can be found in many children that may have dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), autism, specific language impairment, pervasive developmental disorder, developmental delay, and a few others. Children that have Audio Processing Disorder are often thought to hear normally because they usually are able to detect pure tones in a very quiet environment, such as a sound-proof room. In order to be able to diagnose a child with this disorder, you have to look for more symptoms than just hearing in a quiet environment. Some observations that can be made by parents, doctors, or teachers that can suggest a child has APD are difficulty of paying attention and retaining information that is presented orally, problems carrying out multi-step directions, poor listening skills, needing more time to process information, low academic performance, behavior problems, difficulty with reading, comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary. Another symptom is language difficulty. This means that the child confuses syllable sequences and can also have difficulty developing vocabulary and understanding language. There is now a lot of research being conducted on Audio Processing Disorder. In trying to understand why children have this disorder, there are new technologies to study the human brain through imaging. This enables doctors and scientists to monitor the brain without having a…
