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Updated: Jul 19, 2026
Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities
Published on: January 29, 2014
[Critical analysis of children with suspicion of auditory processing disorders]
1Abteilung Phiniatrie/Pädaudiologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Robert-Koch-Strasse 40, 37075 Göttingen. ckiese@med.uni-goettingen.de
Insights
Auditory processing disorder (APD) in infants is common, but standard diagnostics may not fully capture this neurocognitive issue. Further research is needed to refine APD evaluation methods.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric audiology
- Neurocognition
- Speech-language pathology
Background:
- Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a frequent reason for pediatric audiology referrals.
- The diagnostic validity of standard clinical assessments for APD in infants is questioned.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the efficacy of standard clinical diagnostics for identifying auditory processing disorders (APD) in infants.
- To analyze the auditory performance of children with suspected APD.
Main Methods:
- Clinical examination of 107 children with suspected APD at a university hospital.
- Exclusion of children with hearing acuity, learning, intelligence, dyslexia, language, or attention disorders, leaving 59 for APD evaluation.
- Auditory performance assessment using speech audiometry, dichotic word discrimination, and auditory sequential memory tests for digits and non-words.
Main Results:
- Norm-deviant auditory performances ranged from 7% in speech audiometry to 86% in auditory sequential short-term memory for non-words.
- Significant percentages of children showed deficits in dichotic word discrimination (55%) and auditory sequential memory (59% for digits, 86% for non-words).
- No significant differences in audiometric or psychometric test performances were found across different therapy groups (speech therapy, occupational therapy, or both).
Conclusions:
- Children presenting with auditory processing problems exhibit significant heterogeneity.
- APD evaluation should focus on processing skills independent of complex language stimuli, such as tone parameters and pitch memory.
- Current diagnostic approaches may require refinement to accurately assess APD in infants.
Background:
APDs at infancy has become a common reason of introduction at phoniatric/pedaudiologic departments. The question arises whether this neurocognitive construct can be accounted with the standard clinical diagnostics.
Methods:
The children with suspicion of APD referred to the Department of Phoniatrics/Pedaudiology at the University Hospital Goettingen/Germany were clinically examined.
Patients:
Of 107 children 8 % demonstrated abnormal hearing acuity, 7 % learning and intelligence disorders, 7 % developmental dyslexia, 6 % language impairments, and 5 % attention deficit/hyperactivity. So, 59 children remained for evaluating for an APD (mean age: 85.3; SD 16.3 months).
Results:
Their auditory performances were normdeviant from 7 % (speech audiometry) to 86 % (auditory sequential short-term memory for non-words). 55 % of the children exhibited a reduced dichotic word discrimination, 59 % a performance below norm level in auditory sequential memory for digits, and 86 % for non-words. Next step, the children of the study group were distributed according to their therapy situations at the time of examination: without; speech therapy; occupational therapy; speech therapy + occupational therapy. No significant group effects were found in the mean performances of the audiometric and psychometric tests, even though the results considerably differed. No auditory dimension made a contribution to separate the groups in a stepwise discriminant analysis.
Conclusions:
There was a notably inherent heterogeneity of the population presenting with auditory processing problems. The overall objective of the APD evaluation must be to assess processing skills apart from complex stimuli like language skills (e. g. parameter of tones, memory of tone pitch).
