Auditory processing is a person’s ability to process, or take in, spoken communication from others. This doesn’t include the process of analysing and understanding what has been said, just essentially transitioning the sentence from the ear to the brain. An auditory processing disorder (also known as central auditory processing disorder) occurs when this process is compromised and a person has difficulty processing (or taking in) all of what is said to them.
Across the spectrum of society, a lot of people actually experience auditory processing difficulties in varying severities. At the milder end, a person may be able to process spoken sentences within conversation with another person with no difficulty when they are in a quiet place with minimal distractions. However, that person may then have difficulty processing all of what is said in a busier, noisier environment, go in and out of focus, and only process some of what has been said. At the more severe end of the scale are people with severe intellectual disabilities who, due to a variety of factors, often are not able to process a single word said to them. There is a lot of variation as to how auditory processing difficulties present between these two points.
People who have auditory processing difficulties of varying severities will basically take in or process parts of a sentence but not the sentence in its entirety. Take, for example, the sentence ‘go into the laundry and put the blue bag on the chair’. This sentence, though not long, is loaded with detail and there are a lot of components to process. A person hearing this sentence needs to process ‘laundry’, ‘blue’, ‘bag’ and ‘chair.’ A person with strong auditory processing skills would be able to process all components of this sentence easily. However, a person with a mild auditory processing difficulty may miss one component and may only take in the ‘laundry’, ‘blue’ and ‘bag’ components of this sentence. A person with a more significant auditory processing difficulty may only process ‘blue’ and ‘bag’. And a person with a severe processing difficulty may only process one of these words, such as ‘laundry’ or ‘bag’ or potentially not capture any of what was said.
Another factor in auditory processing is the auditory load. This is basically the amount and complexity of information the person has to process and how long they need to sustain continually processing that amount of information for. People with weaker auditory processing skills may be able to process all or most of what is being said to them for a short time, but if they need to maintain this level of processing over a long presentation of information, such as someone taking a long turn in a conversation and sharing a lot of information in one go, they begin to fatigue and their ability to process what is being said to them reduces. Other factors can also have an impact here, such as tiredness, distraction, anxiety or anything else that leads to the person feeling compromised in any way. It is as if the information the person hears is entering a tank where it is processed and then progressed out the other end of the tank. For a person with strong auditory processing skills, the information comes in, is rapidly processed and then progressed out the other side of the tank. People with weaker auditory processing skills may start this process efficiently when listening to information being presented but can get to a point where it is not processed in the tank as efficiently and a percentage of that information starts to be lost over time. People with weaker auditory processing skills would experience this in meetings, lectures, class discussions, long conversations or even when a person takes a longer turn in a conversation. People with more severe auditory processing difficulties actually need information to be presented one idea at a time to give them space for all components of what has been said to progress fully through the tank before more information is presented.
Auditory processing difficulties can be effectively treated through speech pathology programs. People across the spectrum of auditory processing difficulties can be supported to develop their ability to process spoken sentences from others and their ability to maintain this in noisier, more distracting environments and when there is a greater volume of content being presented. This can be treated through group as well as individual programs.