CENTRAL AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER

An auditory processing disorder (APD) occurs when auditory centers of the brain are affected by injury, disease, tumor, heredity, or unknown causes. APD does not necessarily involve hearing loss. Auditory processing involves sound localization and lateralization, auditory discrimination, auditory pattern recognition, the temporal aspects of sounds, and the ability to deal with degraded and competing acoustic signals. Therefore, a deficiency in one or more of the above may constitute a central auditory processing disorder.