Auditory Processing Disorder - Relation To Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia

Relation To Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia

There has been considerable debate over the relationship between APD and Specific language impairment (SLI).

SLI is diagnosed when a child has difficulties with understanding or producing spoken language for no obvious cause. The problems cannot be explained in terms of peripheral hearing loss. The child is typically late in starting to talk, and may have problems in producing speech sounds clearly, and in producing or understanding complex sentences. Some theoretical accounts of SLI regard it as the result of auditory processing problems. However, this view of SLI is not universally accepted, and others regard the main difficulties in SLI as stemming from problems with higher-level aspects of language processing. Where a child has both auditory and language problems, it can be hard to sort out cause-and-effect.

Similarly with developmental dyslexia, there has been considerable interest in the idea that for some children reading problems are downstream consequences of difficulties in rapid auditory processing. Again, cause and effect can be hard to unravel. This is one reason why experts such as Moore have recommended using non-verbal auditory tests to diagnose APD.

It has also been suggested that APD may be related to cluttering, a fluency disorder marked by word and phrase repetitions.

If, as is commonly done, APD is assessed using tests that involve identifying, repeating or discriminating speech, then a child may do poorly because of primary language problems. In a study comparing children with a diagnosis of dyslexia and those with a diagnosis of APD, they found the two groups could not be distinguished. obtained similar findings in studies comparing children diagnosed with SLI or APD. The two groups had very similar profiles. This raises the worrying possibility that the diagnosis that a child receives may be largely a function of the specialist they see: the same child who would be diagnosed with APD by an audiologist may be diagnosed with SLI by a speech-language therapist or with dyslexia by a psychologist.