auditory processing disorder in children

Treatment usually focuses on three areas: environmental modifications, developing higher order skills to compensate, and remediation of the auditory deficit. Treatment for APD is individualized towards the child. What is involved in the treatment of APD? Most auditory processing disorder tests require the child to be at least 7 or 8 years old. Auditory processing disorder cannot be diagnosed through a symptom checklist alone, and requires careful and specific diagnostic measures. May prefer reading stories independently, rather than listening aloud.Īlthough many professionals including speech language pathologists are involved in the treatment process, only Audiologist may diagnose APD.May experience problems in school such as spelling, reading, and understanding information presented verbally in the classroom.Easily distracted by loud or sudden noises.Frequently asks for speakers to repeat themselves.Difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments.Articulation problems in children with ADHD are caused by extraneous factors unassociated with ADHD. Children with APD may also experience articulation difficulties by confusing similar sounds such as three instead of free. The problem lies within discriminating sounds, not difficulty hearing the sounds.Ĭhildren with ADHD have difficulty understanding verbal information due to lack of attention not neural processing. There is no hearing loss associated with APD. How is APD different than a hearing impairment? APD impacts receptive and expressive language. For example, distinguishing differences in the sounds that make up words. The results of this study raise the importance of adapting the APD test battery for children with a different linguistic background as well as increasing awareness of available clinical resources to all families in our area.APD is a brain-based condition affecting the way the brain interprets and recognizes sounds. The low percentage of Hispanic or African American children referred to the clinic for APD evaluations may be related to the socioeconomic status and linguistic differences among the concerned families. Hence, the current estimate is likely an underestimate of the actual APD prevalence. The findings of higher prevalence rates among the children attending private schools and higher proportion of Caucasians children referred for APD evaluation suggest that more children among those in public schools and in the Hispanic and African American groups should have been referred for an APD evaluation. We also found a significant difference in APD prevalence depending on the school types. The difference might be due to the diagnosis criteria of APD among studies as well as the use of school enrollment number as the referenced population to estimate prevalence in our study. The estimated prevalence of APD in the current study was lower than the previously published estimates. The results also revealed that the majority of children referred to the clinics were Caucasian (85.6%), whereas minority groups were underrepresented for this geographical area with only 3.7% of Hispanic or Latino children and 5.8% of Black or African American children. We found that prevalence of APD among the children who attended private schools was more than two times higher than the children who attended public schools. The prevalence of APD was 1.94 per 1,000 children in this study. The prevalence of APD was estimated using the total number of students enrolled in the same school attended by each participant in the 2011 academic year as cohort. Out of 243 children referred for an APD evaluation, 94 children exhibited one or more auditory processing deficits in the areas of auditory closure, auditory figure ground, binaural integration, binaural separation, and temporal processing.ĭemographic and audiological data, clinical history (parental reports on prenatal and postnatal information, birth weight and height, medical and developmental history, otologic/audiological history, education information, behavioral characteristics), and results of the APD test battery were retrospectively obtained from the electronic medical records of each participant. The mean ages were 9.8 yr for boys and 9.7 yr for girls. To examine the demographic characteristics of children diagnosed with APD at a tertiary health-care facility and the prevalence of pediatric APD.Ī total of 243 children (149 boys and 94 girls) who were referred to the Nemours Audiology Clinics in the Delaware Valley for an APD evaluation. Although auditory processing disorder (APD) is a widely recognized impairment, its prevalence and demographic characteristics are not precisely known in the pediatric population.

Auditory processing disorder in children