Have you ever heard of APD (Auditory Processing Disorder)?
It is a disorder in which a person has difficulty in acquiring audio information, such as being unable to understand what the other person is saying, even though he or she can hear the sound.
It is not visually apparent, and since the person can hear sounds, it is difficult to be understood by others.
Such APD is usually evaluated by the following tests.
- Basic Hearing Tests
- Electrophysiological testing
- Auditory Cognitive Testing
- Visual Cognitive Testing
- Examination of intelligence, language development, etc.
- Questionnaire for psychological and other aspects
These are used to test for APD.
It is not easy to determine if you have APD or not, so if you think you might have APD, you can use this test as a reference to find out for yourself in a simplified way if there is anything you can do.
Let's take a look at the tests that are usually used to test for APD.
Please read more about APD in the article "APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) Symptoms of not being able to understand what is being said even though you can hear it".
Basic Hearing Tests
APD is a very ambiguous condition in which the patient can hear but cannot understand what the other person is saying.
Therefore, the first step is a hearing test to isolate whether it is a hearing loss or APD in the first place.
There are three main types of hearing tests.
- Pure tone test
- Word Sound Test
- Otoacoustic Emission
The pure tone test is often used in health checkups, where you are asked to press a button when you hear a beeping sound.
If this is the case, there are many smartphone apps available for free download now, so if you think you might have APD! If you think this is the case, first try a hearing test to isolate the problem.
If there are no problems on the pure tone test, APD is suspected.
On the other hand, if the pure tone test fails, you may have a hearing loss and should go to a hospital!
The word test is a test to see if you can correctly hear a single letter, such as "a" or "ni," as it is played.
It is often used to check the adjustment of hearing aids.
It may be difficult for a person with normal hearing to understand, but with hearing loss, the sound is distorted and the hearing aid is not adjusted correctly.
For example, "Ka" sounds like "Ha".
There is a symptom that "ta" sounds like "nu," which is not even a vowel sound at all.
This is a case where you can hear the sound but cannot understand the conversation, and you can discover that it sounds completely different.
Otoacoustic emission is simply a test to see if there is an echo of sound in the ear.
If there is damage to the ear, this otoacoustic emission will be lost.
You cannot examine this by yourself, so you need to have it checked at a hospital or other institution.
The hearing screening of a newborn baby to check whether the baby can hear is done by this otoacoustic emission.
If you want to try a basic hearing test on your own, try the pure tone test and the speech sound test.
Electrophysiological Testing
Physiological tests are tests to check the functions of the body.
Otoacoustic emission is one type of physiological test, but it is a basic type of hearing test because it examines whether the patient can hear in the first place.
Electrophysiological tests include the auditory brainstem response (ABR) and the auditory mid-latency response (AMLR).
These physiological tests require taking EEGs and other tests, so they cannot be confirmed in person.
Auditory Cognitive Testing
There are various types of auditory perception tests, including questions such as the Fisher Questionnaire for Auditory Problems and the Children's Hearing Ability Scale.
There are several tests, such as the binaural separation hearing test and the binaural alternating hearing test.
The checklist can be downloaded online, so if you would like to use it as an indicator of whether or not you have APD, we encourage you to download and perform the checklist yourself.
Binaural Separated Hearing Test is a test in which different letters are played simultaneously in the right and left ears to see if both can hear them.
For example, the left ear will play "ha" and the right ear will play "ga" to see if both can answer the same question.
This is not a correct test, but a similar test can be performed by an individual.
The binaural alternating hearing test is a test in which a sentence is played at regular intervals, switching from one side to the other, to see if it is understood correctly.
What does this mean?
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"
For example, for the sentence "Today is the day" from the left side, "haiyo" from the right side, "tenki" from the left side, and "is" from the right side, "is" from the right side.
The students are asked to listen to one sentence at a time, alternating from left to right.
This is a task that is answered correctly almost 100% of the time by the average adult.
However, there are some cases in which people who have difficulty combining information from both ears may not be able to answer the question.
This binaural alternating hearing test can also be done without using special equipment, so you can try it out.
Visual Cognition Test
The visual perception test is used for comparison with the hearing test to determine whether the visual result is also poor or only the hearing result is poor.
Basically, as long as you can correctly read the information you see with your eyes, you do not need to perform this test on your own.
This visual cognition test is called the Frostig Visual Perception Development Test or the Visual Perception Skills Test.
If you are interested, look them up.
Tests for intelligence, language development, etc.
For intelligence testing, intelligence tests such as the "WISC-IV intelligence test" for children and the WISC-III intelligence test for adults are used.
By looking at the development of basic intelligence, a more rigorous evaluation can be made.
This area is not a self-checking area, as it is done for rigorous evaluation.
Questionnaire for psychological and other aspects
Information needed during the medical interview includes family structure, personality, friendships, and history of hospital visits.
For example, psychological aspects such as family disagreements and financial situation can be considered in relation to APD.
It is also important to know if anyone in the family has similar symptoms.
There are many different types of tests that can be used to evaluate a patient for APD. It is not easy to say, "I am a good person.
In addition, there are many things that can only be seen by a specialist in the evaluation process, making it difficult to self-check.
But there are some tests that can be self-checked, so if you can hear the sound but under noise, you instantly don't know what they are saying.
It's hard to remember what the other person said
If you are having these kinds of problems, suspect APD!
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