Advice & resources
Auditory processing difficulties
Making sense of spoken information, remembering instructions and learning through listening.
Understanding spoken information
Listening involves more than noticing that a sound is present. A learner may struggle to remember spoken instructions, distinguish similar sounds or follow speech in a busy classroom. These difficulties can affect learning and confidence and deserve attention.
Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a clinical term for difficulty making sense of sounds, including speech. People with APD often have normal hearing. However, listening difficulties alone do not establish APD, and hearing, language, attention and literacy concerns need appropriate consideration.
Different listening and language demands
The following six terms can help explain different demands on a learner; they are not six separate diagnoses or a checklist for APD.
- Auditory memory: remembering information heard immediately or after a delay, such as a sequence of instructions, words or numbers.
- Auditory discrimination: telling similar speech sounds or words apart, such as coat and boat, or “ch” and “sh”.
- Auditory closure: making sense of a word or message when part of it has not been heard clearly.
- Auditory synthesis: bringing individual speech sounds together to make a word, a skill used in learning phonics.
- Auditory figure-ground: picking out speech from background noise, for example in a busy classroom.
- Auditory cohesion: the higher-level language demands of connecting meaning, following complex conversations, understanding jokes or making inferences.
Similar difficulties can have different explanations. They do not mean that a learner is not trying, and they should not be used on their own to label someone with a disorder.
Practical ways to make listening easier
Try reducing background noise, speaking face to face, giving instructions in manageable parts and supporting speech with pictures or written information. Allow time to respond and repeat or rephrase information where helpful.
Ask the learner what helps them follow a lesson or conversation. Discuss continuing difficulties with their teacher or education provider so that support can be reviewed.
When specialist advice is needed
If you or your child find it difficult to hear or understand speech, speak to a GP. They may refer you to a hearing specialist. Clinical APD assessment is different from a dyslexia assessment or a test of phonological skills.
The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing is one tool used to explore phonological skills. Phonological assessment explores skills used in literacy, such as awareness and memory of speech sounds; it does not, by itself, diagnose APD. Which tests are appropriate depends on the person and the purpose of assessment.
How Dyslexiam can help with learning
Dyslexiam offers dyslexia assessment and specialist literacy and study-skills support. Kim can discuss how spoken-information difficulties affect reading, spelling or learning and what educational support may be appropriate.
For a school enquiry, discuss the school’s current requirements with Kim. Dyslexiam does not provide a clinical APD diagnosis or medical treatment.
Further reading
Talk things through with Kim
Not sure what this means for you or your child? You can talk things through with Kim before deciding what support might be helpful.
Book a free 30-minute conversation