Auditory Processing

What is Auditory Processing?

It is the ability for a person to take in auditory information and identify, categorize, analyze and make sense of it in his/her brain.

What is an Auditory Processing Disorder?

An auditory processing disorder is the breakdown of a person's ability to make sense of what is heard.  The breakdown can be in several different areas.  One area is a person's ability to quickly and accurately process speech at the speech-sound level, such as the difference between the word pat and bat.  Another area is a person's ability to fill in missing components of the auditory signal, like filling in the missing information on a bad phone connection.  Another area is a person's ability to understand information in one ear while ignoring information in the opposite ear, or the ability to process different information being presented to both ears at the same time and combining it to make one message.  The last area is a person's ability to recognize the contours, patterns, differences and sequence in sounds such as the difference between a high pitch and low pitch sound.

Auditory Processing Testing

Auditory processing testing should be done by an audiologist.  It is a two-hour battery of tests.  This will begin with a hearing test to ensure normal hearing.  Many of the processing tests cannot be done if a hearing loss is present.  There are many auditory processing tests that evaluate each of the different areas within an auditory processing disorder such as:

• Tests that present competing noise at which time the patient will need to pick the signal out from the noise.

• Tests that present different information to both ears at the same time and the patient will need to repeat back parts or all of the material.

• Tests that present part of the information to one ear and part to the other and the patient must combine the information to complete the message.

• Tests that present a series of tones and the patient must indicate the pattern of high or low.

Results

At the end of the assessment, the information will be scored and compiled into a report.  Based on the results, an area of weakness may be determined and the treatment can be planned to focus on this area.