Auditory Processing Disorder is a breakdown of auditory information beyond the physical ability to hear, at the nervous system level. This is a neurological defect which affects how the brain processes a language. Could you have Auditory Processing Disorder? Many times APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) is misdiagnosed it is often confused with attention problems. So how does it affect you? Possibly at times you have been told something and the message gets lost when you try to act on it, or if you are easily distracted and cannot follow through on a many step problem. The name APD has contains the word auditory in it which would make you think it requires hearing loss to have the diagnosis of APD, but many people have perfectly normal hearing. Having a hearing loss is not a requirement for the diagnosis. Some of the characteristics of APD would be, problems following direction, issues reading, remembering what you hear, a major dilemma is distraction from background noise. Now that there is a possibility you could have APD what to do? You can see an Audiologist there you will have several tests which will help with the diagnosis. If you are a child APD will be very different from Child to Child, so a team will use a battery of tests to assess the weak areas and decide on what would work best. The team can include Audiologist, Speech pathologist, psychologist, Teachers, Doctors and Family. Look for the next blog for some history and treatments for APD……..