Research Focus

            Auditory processing disorder (APD; sometimes called CAPD) is a serious problem at all ages, but especially in school-aged children. Until it has been accurately diagnosed the child may be mislabeled, misunderstood, and mishandled. At present audiologists rely almost exclusively on tests that measure how well the child understands words or sentences presented in the context of a variety of difficult listening situations. Such tests rely on the validity of the child’s behavioral responses; yet it is well known that such behavioral responses may be influenced by a host of factors other than genuine APD. These factors include attention-deficit disorder, learning disability, specific language impairment, dyslexia, cognitive deficit, undetected hearing loss, developmental disorder, neurological disease, emotional disorder, lack of motivation, and lack of cooperation. Because of the influence of these “other-than-auditory” factors, there is great danger that APD will be mistakenly diagnosed in children with other problems. Moreover, if the diagnosis is based on only a small number of such behavioral tests, there is a strong possibility that many genuine auditory processing deficits will escape detection.

            Our goal is to develop better tools for the evaluation and definitive diagnosis of APD.  Although behavioral measures continue to be evaluated, our search is concentrated on electrophysiological indices of processing deficits. We focus, particularly, on the small electrical activity evoked in the brain by auditory and visual stimuli. We record these “auditory and visual evoked responses” or AERs by means of small electrodes affixed to the surface of the scalp. Our research to date suggests that these electrical responses from the brain are sensitive to genuine auditory processing deficit and, at the same time, less susceptible to the contaminating influences of non-auditory factors.