[Diagnostic Accuracy of a Test Set to Classify Children with Auditory Processing Disorders (APD)]

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) affects children's academic performance.
• Accurate diagnosis of APD is crucial for effective intervention.
• Evaluating the diagnostic performance of auditory tests is essential for clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the diagnostic performance of a battery of 10 tests for identifying Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) in primary school children.
• To determine the sensitivity and specificity of individual tests within the battery.
• To identify optimal cut-off points for accurate APD diagnosis.

Main Methods:

• Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of 10 tests.
• The Youden Index was calculated to determine optimal cut-off points for diagnostic tests.
• The study included 91 children diagnosed with APD and 87 children without APD, all in grades 2-4.

Main Results:

• The Mottier-Test (auditory non-word repetition) showed excellent diagnostic performance (AUC=0.96), with a sensitivity of 90.1% and specificity of 93.1% at a cut-off of 17.5.
• The HSET-Subtest "Imitation grammatischer Strukturformen" (auditory short-term sentence memory) also demonstrated high discriminative power (AUC=0.94), achieving 84.7% correct classification at a cut-off of 21.5.
• Eight tests exhibited moderate diagnostic accuracy, while two tests (phoneme analysis, monaural temporal order judgment) showed lower accuracy (AUCs 0.72 and 0.75, respectively).

Conclusions:

• Specific tests, such as the Mottier-Test and HSET-Subtest, can effectively identify APDs in primary school children.
• While individual tests show promise, the complete battery of 10 diagnostic tests is indispensable for precise APD specification and guiding auditory treatment dimensions.