HOW DOES APD PRESENT IN CHILDREN?
Children who present with Auditory Processing / Listening Disorders have difficulty with some or all listening activities. They have particular problems when the activities occur in less than ideal listening environments. Hence, they may exhibit only mild problems with sound discrimination and they may make occasional listening errors when speaking on a one to one basis in a good (relatively quiet) environment. They will perform worse, however, when there is competing background noise or speech, when speakers talk rapidly, when they are not devoting their complete attention to the listening task, when the discussion topic is unfamiliar to them, or when they have to perform or remember multiple verbal commands in a row. In addition, they often have weak phonemic systems (speech sound memories used in phonics, reading, and spelling), thus their early reading skills are often deficient. They also often appear as though they do not hear well. It is common for children with Listening Problems to say, "what?" or "huh?". They are not always intimately in touch with the sounds in the environment or they have difficulty tracking and keeping separate the variety of sounds bombarding them. They may have trouble maintaining focus on specific activities or rapidly recalling pertinent information to the task in which they are engaged, hence they do not always grasp exactly what has been said.
