When the Brain Can't Hear: Unraveling the Mystery of Auditory Processing Disorder

by Teri James Bellis

From the first proposal of the term APD to describe these hearing deficits in the 1960s, the existence argument has raged. Some have said that auditory processing deficits are merely a manifestation of a specific learning disability or attention deficit or language disorder. Some have said that the frequent coexistence, or comorbidity, of auditory deficits with these other disorders render them merely one characteristic of a larger, more global disability. Some have even said that there is no way in which an auditory-based deficit of any type can have the kind of far-reaching implications hypothesized by the pro-APD camp.

Why, now, after all these years, should we suddenly “invent” a new label for an old set of problems that may well just be manifestations of other disorders already understood and diagnosable?

For the majority of these individuals, hearing loss simply cannot account for their difficulties.

specific patterns of findings on tests of central auditory function that precisely mirror those of known pathologies involving the central auditory nervous system and nothing else, which cannot be ignored or put down merely to coincidence.

that the neural representation of sound in the higher brain stem or brain pathways of many of these individuals simply is different from that of other, nondisordered individuals.