Central Auditory Processing (CAP)

Characteristics of Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD)

There are two types of “hearing” problems that a person may have – peripheral loss or central auditory processing disorder.

A peripheral loss is one that is caused from a disease or disorder in the ear. This type of loss is often designated by degree as a mild, moderate, severe or profound loss.

A “central” auditory processing problem (or auditory processing disorder) is not caused from a disorder in the ear itself, but instead seems to be due to a disorder in how the brain (central auditory nervous system) perceives the information about sounds that it receives from the ear. This system is responsible for sound localization, discrimination of differences between sounds and words, detection of the timing gaps or intervals between sounds and the ability to hear in background noise. In other words, auditory processing is how the brain makes sense of what it hears.

Children with central auditory deficiencies are generally youngsters with normal hearing in the usual sense. That is, they usually have the ability with which to hear very faint sounds (normal hearing sensitivity). They simply cannot use auditory information efficiently and may not learn well by listening alone.

In general, children with CAPD typically demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics:

• Poor auditory attending skill. That is, trouble paying attention to what they need to hear.
• Deficits in foreground /background discrimination ability (also called a deficit in figure/ground or integration problem). This is difficulty listening to, or maintaining attention to, speech that is delivered in a complex environment. For example, speech with noise in the background, not spoken clearly, or delivered in a “busy” environment with many visual and auditory distractions.
• Limitations in auditory memory and retrieval.
• Delays in receptive auditory language development.
• Problems in telling the difference between similar sounding words like “mat” and “map”.