Auditory Discrimination
People with
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD),
Poor Auditory Discrimination,
Poor Auditory Reception and/or
Poor Auditory Processing.
May have
Difficulty with Auditory Closure,
Phoneme Syllable Decoding,
Phonological Coding, Auditory Perception Inefficiency, and/or
Auding.
What is Auditory Discrimination?
The meaningful interpretation or discrimination of sounds and sound sequences is auditory perception. Perception includes the act of becoming meaningfully aware and affectively appreciative of a stimulus. This section is about that act when the stimulus is heard. Synonyms for auditory perception are auditory reception, auding, and auditory discrimination.
The words auditory processing are often used to describe this discrimination and the putting of meaning to the sounds. All of these terms may be used about students with problems getting individual sounds in accurately, tracking separate sounds in a series, and/or associating them to appropriate meanings.
Identifying Auditory Discrimination
Auditory discrimination includes accurate registering of sounds or sequence of sounds that have been heard. The ability of the individual with normal hearing to tell the difference between the sounds in the words camp and clamp would be an example of auditory discrimination.
Sometimes auditory figure-ground problems exist. When it is difficult to focus on the critical details in the auditory foreground without the background noises causing confusion, an auditory figure-ground problem exists. This, too, is included in some authorities' use of "auditory processing."
Some people have a lag in their processing. The accuracy seems okay, but there is a millisecond lag from the time the stimulus is heard to the time the brain processes what has been heard that is greater than it is for most people. The individual often misses what follows. This causes tremendous difficulty in conversations. People with this slowed processing often feel overwhelmed by heard input. Sometimes they tune out.
The student with difficulty with auditory discrimination is often described as one who doesn't listen well. If you go back and look at preschool and primary grade reports, this student might have been described as a daydreamer early in his/her school career. This student will have difficulty sounding out words and mastering other phonetic concepts. This student might well have trouble understanding what words are said. Students with auditory discrimination difficulty are frequently lip readers. They often depend heavily on nonverbal communication.
The frequent mispronunciations by students with auditory receptive problems may be the symptom that finally brings a student to be tested. A bright eight year old we know worried about his sister's case of "garlic fever." She had scarlet fever. A ten year old being tested scratched persistently at his stomach. One of these scratches lifted his shirt and showed hives all over his tummy. The child said that he would be able to go home, soon, and put "ocean" on his rash (lotion). Mispronunciations are something we all experience. The student with auditory receptive difficulty seems to generate them far more often. Some other student's cruel laughter will remind the learning disabled student how much has been misperceived and how foolish his/her statements might appear; the reminder is usually painful. This disorder has great impact on self image.
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