Auditory Processing

Auditory processing is the ability to perceive, analyze, and conceptualize what is heard and is one of the major underlying skills needed to learn to read and spell.

Auditory discrimination is hearing differences in sounds, including volume, pitch, duration, and phoneme.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to segment sounds, to blend sounds to make words, to break words apart into separate sounds, and to manipulate and analyze sounds to determine the number, sequence, and sounds within a word.

Signs of auditory processing difficulties vary depending on personality and on the experiences of the child. They include:

• have trouble paying attention to and remembering information presented orally, and may cope better with visually acquired information
• have problems carrying out multi-step directions given orally; need to hear only one direction at a time
• have poor listening skills
• need more time to process information
• have low academic performance
• have behaviour problems
• have language difficulties (e.g., they confuse syllable sequences and have problems developing vocabulary and understanding language)
• have difficulty with reading, comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary.