What Is
Central Auditory Processing Disorder?

The deficits may originate in the left hemisphere, or the right hemisphere, or even between the two hemispheres.

Symptoms of CAPD may manifest in various ways in different individuals depending on the location and severity of the deficit.

The most common symptom is difficulty following directions. Your child may misunderstand spoken information. You may notice that your child often asks “what?” or “huh?” And you may need to repeat questions and directions frequently.

Sounds and background noise may cause distraction easily. Your child may have difficulty paying attention and following conversations.

Also, your child may be quite bothered by loud or sudden noises. Some sounds may be uncomfortable or even painful. Your child may have unusual behaviors in response to these sounds.

Your child may not be able to discern the similarities and differences between sounds and words. Therefore, they may have poor phonics skills.

In addition, your child may not understand syntax (the way words are put together to form sentences), semantics (the association of words and sentences with their meaning), and pragmatics (the way that language is used).

Furthermore, your child may not be able to comprehend abstract information and conversational nuances well either.

All of these problems can lead to various academic problems particularly involving reading, spelling, writing, and math word problems. The cause of central auditory processing disorder may be any of the following problems.

• Recurrent ear infections (most common)
• Middle ear fluid
• Pregnancy complications
• Labor and delivery complications
• Genetics
• Birth defects
• Lead, mercury and other environmental poisons and toxins
• Exposure to loud sounds and toxic noise (unwanted and unstructured sounds)
• Auditory deprivation
• Brain trauma

Central auditory processing disorder is extremely difficult to diagnose correctly because many symptoms overlap with other disorders, such as ADHD. Also, many individuals with autism, ADHD, and various learning disabilities also have central auditory processing disorder.

An audiologist specifically trained in central auditory processing disorders should diagnose this condition. Your child will be in a sound booth with headphones for several hours during testing. They will be asked various simple questions in which they will need to respond. Our audiologist provided several breaks periodically and allowed favorite stuffed animals in the booth also.

The sense of hearing is actually rather complex. We have various auditory skills that must be present in order to listen well. Central auditory processing disorder will result when any of the following skills are missing or defective.

• Auditory Memory – ability to receive, process, store, and recall auditory information
• Auditory Discrimination – ability to distinguish between sounds and words that are similar
• Auditory Scene Analysis – ability to separate sounds when a large mixture of sounds is present
• Auditory Figure-Ground – ability to perceive speech and particular sounds with a noisy background
• Auditory Attention – ability to maintain focus and concentration during listening tasks
• Auditory Cohesion – ability to understand meaning, inference, abstraction and intention of conversation and music. This skill is a higher order function involving tone, facial expressions and body language often present for individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome.
• Auditory Closure – ability to fill in missing pieces of sounds and words
• Auditory Anticipation – ability to expect forthcoming sounds and words
• Auditory Temporal Processing – ability to analyze the timing and pattern of sounds
• Amplitude Perception – ability to perceive loudness or intensity of sounds
• Frequency Perception – ability to split sounds into frequency bands
• Sound Localization – ability to identify the source of sound
• Auditory Temporal Processing – ability to analyze timing and pattern of sounds

Your child may demonstrate inappropriate behaviors as a result of auditory distortions which occur when sound is perceived incorrectly. These auditory distortions cause a stress response. Your child may withdraw and become depressed, or your child may try even harder and become anxious. Your child may act silly and clown around in order to obtain a sense of belonging to the group. Or your child may become frustrated leading to anger and aggression.

Now you want to know how to improve central auditory processing disorder!

First, here are some helpful tips that work well with my children with central auditory processing disorder.

• Use short simple verbal information
• Write down instructions
• Use lists
• Teach note-taking
• Use mnemonics
• Repeat or rephrase information to your child
• Ask for your child to repeat the information back to you
• Use visual and tactile cues whenever possible
• Eliminate competing sounds
• Reading aloud
• Use graphic organizers
• Play games that require auditory inputs, such as Guess Who? and Guess Where?
• Play charades, hangman, and scavenger hunts
• Listen to nature sounds and identify their location
• Learn to play the piano
• Teach active listening and whole body listening skills

If your child is in the classroom, you will find these tips useful.

• Sit close to the teacher in a quieter area of the room with minimal distractions
• Try an assistive listening device
• Allow your child to have notes from the teacher or another student
• Preteach important new information

By the way, learning a foreign language will be extremely difficult for these children with CAPD. It is hard enough for them to learn English!

You may want to consider sign language or possibly Latin since there is no speaking or listening. If you do choose a living language, I would not suggest one with different characters like Greek, Hebrew or Chinese.

My son with Asperger’s Syndrome has opted for Latin to help him with SATs, and my daughter with PDD-NOS has an intense desire to learn Spanish. I believe that listening to the different frequencies from natives will also help her overcome her CAPD. And since we homeschool, I will be able to adapt the curriculum and to move slower as needed to compensate for their deficits.

Next, you need to read these books.

I found these books extremely helpful in further explaining central auditory processing disorder and in presenting environmental modifications and coping strategies.

And finally, you need a program which will address all of the auditory skills in an inexpensive and effective home-based program. But what program do you use?

Well, I highly recommend The Listening Program! I have used this program with my children with Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD-NOS, ADHD and sensory integration dysfunction with tremendous success. Learn more about this fantastic autism therapy called The Listening Program.

I also recommend Sound Health and Music for Babies to help make even more brain connections and to block the detrimental effects of toxic noise in our environment.

Implementing these tips, reading these books, and using The Listening Program together will dramatically help your child with central auditory processing disorder.

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