Evolving concepts of developmental auditory processing disorder (APD): a British Society of Audiology APD special...

Children with listening difficulties, but normal audiometry, may be diagnosed with APD. The diagnosis is typically based on poor performance on tests of perception of both non-speech and speech stimuli. However, non-speech test results correlate only weakly with evaluations of speech-in-noise processing, cognitive skills, and caregiver evaluations of listening ability. The interpretation of speech test results is confounded by the involvement of language processing mechanisms. Overall, listening ability is associated more with higher-level, cognitive and analytic processing than with lower-level sensory processing. Current diagnosis of a child with APD, rather than another problem (e.g. language impairment, LI), is determined more by the referral route than by the symptoms. Co-occurrence with other learning problems suggests that APD may be a symptom of a more varied neurodevelopmental disorder. Alternately, APD has been proposed as a cause of language-based disorders, but there is no one-to-one mapping between listening and language among individuals. Screening for APD may be most appropriately based on a well-validated, caregiver questionnaire that captures the fundamental problem of listening difficulties and identifies areas for further assessment and management. This approach has proved successful for LI, and may in future serve as a metric to help assess other, objective testing methods.