Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) looks different as children get older. For student with APD their learning and reading skills may still progress, but early clues may gradually fade, and new and different clues may emerge as the student gets older.
APD Checklists are available to help therapists (usually SLPs) figure out whether students are presenting with auditory processing deficits that require more comprehensive assessment. Parents and teachers may also be asked to participate in order to determine whether deficits are consistent across all settings.1
Early Childhood and Preschool APD Warning Signs
Speech and language delays are the most common early outward signs of an auditory processing problem. Consequently, they generally receive vigorous attention from teachers and parents. However, often there are no speech delays and yet APD is present. Here are some other signs of auditory processing difficulties to look for:
- Learning to speak
- Being able to rhyme
- Separating meaningful sounds from background noise
- Remembering stories or songs
- Staying focused on a person’s voice
- Sound localization — recognizing where sounds are coming from
- Confusing similar sounding words
- Slow start to recognizing letter sounds in words (as opposed to alphabet)
Elementary Age APD Checklist
Many aspects of auditory processing dysfunction only surface in elementary school when multi-tasking comes into play. For instance, reading comprehension requires decoding skill AND understanding content at the same time. This requires processing efficiency that is beyond the reach of most children with APD. Common symptoms of auditory processing disorder in the 5-10 year old range include:
- Remembering and following spoken directions
- Difficulty with reading — sounding out and/or reading comprehension
- Inattentiveness while in class, doing homework or reading
- Mishearing words of songs
- Spends too much time on homework
- Word retrieval and rapid automatic naming difficulties
APD Checklist for Teenagers and Adults
Auditory processing disorder in teenagers is harder to detect, since by high school most outward speech and language issues disappear. This does not always mean however that the auditory processing problems have gone away. Rather, they morph into different impediments to academic success.
Common signs of auditory processing disorder in teenagers and adults include:
- Talks louder than necessary
- Reading progress stalls and/or reading reluctance develops
- Disappointing performance in high stakes tests
- Slow worker in tests and/or homework
- Struggles to remember a list or sequence
- Often needs words or sentences repeated
- Interprets words too literally
1. Central Auditory Processing Disorder Symptoms; Checklist For Auditory Processing Disorder For All Ages; Gemm Learning.
