My Project

A child’s ability to not only hear sounds, but to understand what is heard, is important to their academic and social development. Unfortunately, many children who have clinically normal peripheral hearing often have difficulty understanding sounds. Such children are often diagnosed as having a central auditory processing disorder. Some children who are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder also report difficulties in auditory processing. This project studies auditory processing in children with suspected difficulties so that better, more individualized assessment and treatment programs can be developed. The focus is on better defining auditory skills and auditory learning and the extent to which these skills relate to academic, speech-language, cognitive, phonologic, attention, and memory skills.