What is an auditory processing disorder and what can be done to improve it?
Auditory processing skills are a hierarchy of skills that are basic to the listening and communication process that affect the acquisition and mastery of both spoken and written language skills. These skills are sequential in development. However, the boundaries of each are not well defined resulting in overlap and are, essentially, inseparable. (Bellis, 1996; Educational Audiology Association, 1996) Jerger and Musiek (2000) state that “Children and adults with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) are a heterogeneous group of people who have difficulty using auditory information to communicate and learn. APD is a set of problems that occurs in different listening tasks. It is a deficit in the processing of auditory input which may be exacerbated in unfavorable acoustic environments and is associated with difficulty listening for speech-language understanding, language development and learning.” Simply stated auditory processing is what you do with what you hear. It is important to know t
