An Auditory Processing Assessment is a batch of tests which can assess how someone processes or understands sound.
Sometimes people can have normal hearing results on a standard diagnostic hearing test, but still report difficulty hearing or understanding speech on daily basis.
If you present with difficulties on multiple areas of our Auditory Processing Assessment, you may be diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder.
People with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) typically report difficulties understanding speech in background noise, difficulty with understanding or repeating numbers, or getting sounds mixed up.
Important information:
Auditory Processing Assessments can be done on anyone aged 8 and up.
The assessments are $400 and can take two hours to complete. If you haven’t had a standard hearing test with us already, we would ask you to come in for this first so we can ensure there are no other factors that might influence results (e.g fluid in the middle ear).
As very few audiology clinics provide APD testing, there will likely be a waitlist for being assessed. Please be understanding, as these assessments are very involved and take a long time for reporting and diagnosis.
We cannot offer these appointments online, as they can only be done at certain times. Please call us on 03 359 8557 to book in an Auditory Processing Assessment.
Continue reading below to see how we can improve your symptoms of APD.
APD facts:
Age doesn't matter
People of any age can suffer from APD symptoms.
Other diagnoses
APD is more common in those who have other diagnoses such as ADHD or dyslexia.
Health changes
People can develop symptoms of APD after health changes or head injuries.
Hearing loss & APD
You can have both hearing loss AND APD. If you are still struggling with well-fitted hearing aids, auditory processing testing may be beneficial.
How can I improve my APD symptoms?
There are two main avenues we offer to help improve your auditory processing skills, and we will recommend one or both depending on your circumstances and results.
1. Auditory Training and Therapy
We provide a 12-week block course for Auditory Training and Therapy.
This is typically a one-hour appointment per week with Bradi, our audiologist. We tailor the training material to suit your particular needs and weaknesses from your assessment.
We use the Buffalo Model Therapy to help re-train your brain’s ability to understand individual phonemes, understanding speech in background noise, and auditory memory.
This training model has been proven world-wide to improve auditory abilities.
The cost of this block course is $2200 and includes a full Auditory Processing Re-Assessment at the end to measure improvement.
2. Hearing Aids and/or Remote Microphone Systems
Depending on your hearing and auditory processing results, we may also recommend a hearing aid trial.
Hearing aids can help process background noise and focus on speech, so even for people with normal hearing, hearing aids have been a recommendation for treating APD for many years.
We may also recommend a remote microphone system. A remote microphone system is an external microphone that can be worn by someone else (e.g a teacher) and it streams the speech directly into the hearing devices. There are many different versions of remote microphone systems, and it depends on what your individual needs are.
We have APD-specific demo hearing aids and remote microphones in the clinic that we may use throughout the Auditory Training and Therapy course block.