Many parents and professionals are confused about dyslexia and often express frustration because symptoms which characterize dyslexia appear to be indistinguishable from auditory processing disorders. Today, audiologists struggle to deal with these issues, while few of our diagnostic tools provide the sensitivity and specificity required to accurately diagnose a specific auditory processing deficit.Ī good example is children with dyslexia. It is likely that most children with APDs have comorbid conditions and therefore, the audiologist needs to ideally provide a targeted diagnostic battery that will ultimately distinguish auditory processing difficulties from other disorders. Typically, referred children have other problems, such as learning, speech, language, attention and/or reading difficulties. Interestingly, children are rarely referred to the audiologist based on auditory processing issues in isolation.

Today, there is an increasing demand on the audiologist to provide useful clinical batteries for diagnosing auditory processing disorders (APDs) in children using standard audiologic test conditions. While these methods indicated a number of children had auditory processing difficulties, it was apparent that more stringent, controlled procedures, such as those typically used by audiologists, might yield better results. Most tests were administered across the table from the child, in regular classrooms, with the acoustic material delivered by a cassette recorder or by the clinician, at a conversational level. These children were often found to have various difficulties, including problems with visual-spatial organization, receptive and expressive language, phonology, attention, and in some cases, auditory processing disorders. In the past, children with these problems were evaluated by educational specialists, speech-language pathologists, neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists. More children with learning and reading disabilities are being referred to audiologists for hearing and auditory processing evaluations.

Auditory processing deficit