What is an Auditory Processing Disorder or a Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CPAD)?
It is the inability to discriminate speech sounds causing weakness in auditory memory, vocabulary and/or phonics; the child’s hearing and intelligence are normal. The root problem is the inability to hear very small pieces of sound, sounds as small as 10 milliseconds (ms) in duration. Children/adults who have an Auditory Processing Disorder need a much larger piece of sound, maybe as large as 100 to 300 ms long. This is not a hearing problem; it is a processing problem. The phoneme, or speech sound, only lasts about 40 to 50 ms in duration. Vowels are much longer they are hundreds of ms long. We recommend Auditory Processing Therapy, using The Listening Program®, to remediate this problem for adults and children who fit the criteria.
