When you struggle to hear something, like your boss speaking during a meeting or the barista at Firefly Coffee House telling you the total for your order, you might assume the issue lies in your ears—but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, our ears hear just fine, but our brain isn’t quite sure what to do with the sound it receives, leading to difficulty comprehending speech that we usually associate with hearing loss. That disconnect between our ears and our brains is called auditory processing disorder (APD).
Let’s look at a few signs of APD and how we diagnose it.
Signs of Auditory Processing Disorder
One study estimated that 5% of children and 0.9% of adults have APD.[1] Common signs of APD include difficulty doing the following:
- Locating where a sound originates
- Recalling spoken information
- Paying attention
- Following directions
- Understanding speech amidst noise
- Understanding fast speech
- Separating like-sounding words
- Understanding when something is sarcastic or a joke
If you have APD, you might also need others to repeat themselves more frequently or take a little longer to reply to people when they talk to you.
Children who have APD may struggle to keep up in school or get frustrated when they can’t understand others.
Diagnosing Auditory Processing Disorder
APD often mimics other conditions, like hearing loss or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The similarities between the conditions can make it difficult for patients to know when and where to seek help—but a hearing test is an excellent place to start.
We use hearing tests to rule out hearing loss as a possible cause for your symptoms. A few tests we may perform include:
- Pure tone: measuring how well you hear sound at different frequencies or volumes
- Tympanometry: measuring how well the eardrums move in response to sound and air pressure changes
- Acoustic reflex: shows how the ear reacts to sound
- Auditory brainstem response: measures how well the inner ear and brain pathways respond to sound
- Evoked potential test: measures how well sound travels along the nerves connecting the ears to the brain
In addition to hearing testing, your primary care provider or a mental health specialist may recommend ADHD testing to rule out the condition.
If we confirm that you or your child has APD, we’ll recommend auditory training to help manage the condition. In cases where both APD and hearing loss are present, hearing aids and auditory training can work together to help you or your child communicate.
If you notice any of the above signs of APD, contact Ear, Nose and Throat Associates to schedule a hearing test with one of our specialists.
[1] Hind, S. E., Haines-Bazrafshan, R., Benton, C. L., Brassington, W., Towle, B., & Moore, D. R. (2011). Prevalence of clinical referrals having hearing thresholds within normal limits. International Journal of Audiology, 50(10), 708–716. https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2011.582049