Speech perception capabilities in children a few years after initial diagnosis of auditory processing disorder

Speech perception capabilities in children with auditory processing disorder (APD) were examined several years after the initial diagnosis. A recent longitudinal study showed that listening and communication difficulties of children diagnosed with APD can persist into adulthood (Del Zoppo, Sanchez, and Lind, 2015). We examined the speech perception progress of 21 children selected from the Auditory Processing Disorder database of 243 school-aged children in the Mid-Atlantic region as having an initial diagnosis of APD and an APD reassessment several years later using the SCAN-3C test results. The average age for initial assessment was 7.9 (7-10) years with the most recent APD evaluation age 11.5 (9-16) years. Average standardized scores increased in the competing words, competing sentences, and filtered words tests but not in the auditory figure ground in the recent assessment. Overall, results showed that 81% of the children still had auditory processing deficits, 9% had only associated area issues, and 10% exhibited typical auditory processing performance. While the auditory processing skills of some children with APD are improving over time, some children still show impairment in several processing areas.