The Most Trusted Auditory Processing Disorder Treatment in Delhi

What is auditory processing disorder?

Auditory processing disorder is a type of hearing disorder where your brain has an issue in sound processing. This puts an effect on how you are understanding language and other such sounds of your environment. Like for instance, a person with auditory processing disorder may listen "What colour is couch" as "What colour is the cow".

Auditory processing disorder can indeed start at any age but mostly in childhood, the symptoms initiates. It may seem that the child is processing sounds normally but in reality, they might be facing problem in interpretation and utilization of sounds.

To understand this disorder better you need to understand the process of hearing better. Well! Hearing is a very complicated process where all sound waves from surroundings travel into your ears and in the middle ear get transformed into vibrations. When these vibrations travel to the inner ear, several sensory cells generate an electrical signal that reaches the brain through the auditory nerve. Now in the brain, those signals are evaluated and then processed to convert it into a sound that one can identify.

But people having auditory processing disorder have issue in this step of processing. They face trouble in understanding and reacting to sounds that come from their surroundings. It is a disorder in itself and not the result of any other issues that affect hearing like autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

What are the signs and symptoms of auditory processing disorder?

The signs and symptoms of auditory processing disorder mainly include:

• Trouble in an understanding speech mainly in noisy environments or when multiple people are speaking.
• Repeatedly asking others to say what they have said.
• Misunderstanding a conversation.
• Requiring a long response time.
• The problem in recognizing where the sound is coming.
• The issue in differentiating the same sounds.
• The problem is paying attention to.
• Difficulty in following complicated directions.

What causes auditory processing disorder?

Until now it's not understood what causes auditory processing disorder. However, certain causes have been recognized. This includes:

• Delay in the growth of the area of the brain that process sounds.
• Genetic defects.

Neurological alterations because of ageing.

• Some degenerative diseases like sclerosis, meningitis or any kind of head injury that causes neurological damage.
• Repeating ear infections.
• Issues during or just after birth, like oxygen shortage to the brain, low birth weight and sometimes jaundice.

How to diagnose auditory processing disorder?

There is no specific process for diagnosis of auditory processing disorder and the process mainly involves interpretation of the history like evaluating symptoms, when they were started and checking for any risk factors.

As because several conditions are similar to or happen along with APD, a multidisciplinary approach is taken for diagnosis. This helps your healthcare provider in ruling out important causes for all of your conditions. Here are a few examples:

• An audiologist does several hearing test in Malviya Nagar.
• A psychologist performs some cognitive functioning.
• A speech-language therapist evaluates oral and written skills.
• Teachers provide feedback on some of the learning challenges.

By utilizing all information that the multidisciplinary team offers, the audiologist makes a diagnosis. Some of the examples of the kind of test that they might use includes

• Evaluation of whether the prevailing condition is because of the loss of hearing or APD.
• Assessing your capability to hear as well as understand speech in various scenarios that include background noise, rapid speech as well as competing speech.
• Determining if you can select subtle alterations in sounds like a change in intensity or the pitch.
• Measure your capability to identify sound patterns.
• Make use of electrodes to monitor brain activities while using the headphones for listening to sounds.

How to treat auditory processing disorder?

Treatment of auditory processing disorder is customized as per individual requirements depending on the evaluations that are made during the process of diagnosis. The whole process of treatment mainly focuses on

• Assistance in learning how to process sounds.
• Teaching skills to help in compensating for the disorder.
• Assisting in making changes to the process of learning or the working environment for better management of conditions.
• Auditory training: It is one of the primary components of auditory processing disorder treatment. It helps in better analysis of sounds. Auditory training is done either through in-person, or online or one in one session.
• Compensation plans: This strategy helps in strengthening of things like memory, problem-solving skills and attention to assist you in managing your APD. Examples are:
  • Prediction of important elements of conversation.
  • Utilizing visual aids to assist in organizing information.
  • Integrating memory techniques like mnemonic devices.
  • Learning some of the active listening techniques.
• Changing environment: Making some alterations to your environment helps in the effective management of APD. Some of these changes are
  • Adjusting the room furnishings so that it makes less noise.
  • Avoiding those things that are making some background noises.
  • Sitting very close to the source of sound in circumstances that needs communications like a business meeting or in classrooms.
  • Use of visual aids in the classroom.
  • Integrating assistive technology that uses a microphone as well as a receiver for delivering sounds directly from the source of sounds to the ears.

How can parents help?

A kids auditory system is not developed completely till the age of 15. Thus, kids who are diagnosed with APD can make better skills with time when their auditory system starts maturing. There is no known cure for APD, but speech-language therapy along with some assistive listening devices can assist kids in making sense of sounds and create good communication skills. Parents can also help kids with various computer-aided programs that helps the brain in doing better sound processing in a very noisy environment. Many schools also offer these programs. When your child has APD, ask the officials of the school.

At home also parents can help by decreasing the background noise, using simple and expressive sentences, speaking at a slow rate, asking your kid to repeat directions and maintaining a peaceful and organized lifestyle.

Key takeaways.

Auditory processing disorder is a type of hearing disorder where your brain has a problem in sound processing. People with APD face trouble in

• Understanding speech
• Identifying the difference between the sounds
• Recognizing the source of sounds.

Although the cause of this disorder is not known, however, several factors play a role like developmental issues, neurological damage and genetics or you’re looking for hearing aid in Delhi?

Diagnosis of APD indulges a team of various professionals like a multidisciplinary approach and an assessment test and the treatment is mainly decided based on a case by case.