What is Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)?

Auditory processing is what our brain does with what our ears hear. APD is a disorder of the hearing system that causes a disruption in the way that our brain understands what we are hearing.

Individuals with Auditory Processing Disorder have normal hearing thresholds (abilities). Still, mechanisms in the pathway from the ear to the part of the brain that processes sound are impaired.

Auditory Processing includes mechanisms that preserve, refine, analyse, modify, and interpret information from auditory information. When there is a breakdown in one or more mechanisms along this pathway, the result is a central auditory processing disorder.

These mechanisms underlie the following skills: Decoding, Auditory discrimination, Binaural Processing, Temporal Processing, Spatial Processing, Listening to noise, Auditory Memory, Organisation, and Integration.