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.
The signs and symptoms of auditory processing disorder mainly include:
Until now it's not understood what causes auditory processing disorder. However, certain causes have been recognized. This includes:
Neurological alterations because of ageing.
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:
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
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
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.
Auditory processing disorder is a type of hearing disorder where your brain has a problem in sound processing. People with APD face trouble in
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.