Auditory Processing Disorder, etc...

Post Reply New Topic

I recently began researching auditory processing disorder and auditory memory disorder (there are many variations of wording that seem to stem back to the same problem, how your brain receives and processes information that the ear hears). Anyways, I began researching it because I seem to have my own unique "hearing" problems and wondered if they are really so unique. For example, I have to ask people to repeat themselves alot. I can hear by definition, but I seem to be slower to process what they said, but also I have trouble with enunciation. Like I will think they said something totally different from what they said. So in other words, I will either take a bit longer to process it and ultimately will get it, or I'll just hear something else entirely. It's kind of embarrassing for me. I'm not stupid, I just feel like this is making me appear slow. Plus other symptoms I have include hearing a sound and not knowing where it's coming from. Like if someone knocks on the door I'll run to the garage door instead of the front door, or look in the opposite direction. The other day my therapist was talking and when he asked me to repeat back to him what he said I was embarrassed because I could not repeat verbatim what he said. I do this all the time, like sometimes throughout the day I'll remember fragments of things he's said later. I do understand, I score well on IQ tests.
Just wondered if anyone had any knowledge in this area or personal experience. I'd definitely like to learn more.

I know exactly how you feel. For me, it's worse when I'm tired, but I often hear something that differs from what somebody actually said. For example, when school started, the kid who sits next to me told me her name was Flo, so that's what I called her. A week later I asked her a question. She didn't respond at first. Then she looked up and said, "Are you talking to me? Did you say Flo? My name's Nichole." Oops.

Also, whenever somebody asks me a question, I'll say "what?" or"huh?" before answering them. I hear them, it just takes me a second to understand what I hear.

Well, as to the location of sound, I was fine up until about 5 or 6 years ago (I'm in my 50s) when it seemed that almost overnight I could no longer detect where sound comes from. My cat will come into the room and meow at me and I have a devil of a time finding her. I have noticed that my hearing is slightly muffled in my right ear now. I went to the audiologist to get this checked out and my hearing was "quite good" in both ears, well within normal ranges. Still, I used to have exquisitely sensitive hearing and this is a relatively new annoyance.

As to the delay - oh, yes. I have to have people talk quite plainly and there needs to not be a lot of auditory clutter around or I'll have to have them repeat themselves. I can't seperate out their sound from the ambient sounds. When I have a clear input, it's like it all loads into a buffer... in it goes, a few seconds delay, and out comes the meaning. It's always made me appear a little slow, which was a hoot since my IQ used to test out in the 140s. Now, since I let my hair go gray, people just think I'm a bit hard of hearing so they're entirely more tolerant.

Yeah you described me perfectly. It does get very embarrassing when I think someone is talking about something when they're talking about something completely different.

That describes me 100%! It's CAPD. The having to ask people to repeat themselves is particularly frustrating, because I know it annoys other people and sometimes I have to have it repeated many times before my brain finally processes it correctly.

It was worse when I was little. Someone would be trying to tell me something and I would keep asking them to repeat it because I knew it was important, but the more they repeated themselves the less I understood and the angrier they got, until they would finally give up and I would start crying.

Now for the most part it just takes me a little longer to process auditory information, especially if I'm caught off guard. Like if there's a calm silence for a while and all the sudden someone asks me a question or says something, I will most certainly have to ask them to repeat themselves. Also, spelling. I work at a library and sometimes patrons don't have their cards and that's fine I can just look them up by name, so I ask them how to spell their name, and they spell as if it were a race (to me, at least), and I have to say, "I'm sorry, I can't spell that quickly. Slowly, please." I've mostly gotten over the embarrassment.

Once my ex had to write down directions for me to get from her house to somewhere, and she wrote them all down because she knew that I absolutely needed concise, written directions, and her mom saw them and said, "why would she do that! these directions are so simple! You don't need this!" and I just looked at her and said, "If I didn't have this, I would walk out of your front door and get lost."

Why don't my professors understand that they have to hand me a sheet full of due dates if they want me to get anything done on time? I won't remember if they just tell me!

stupid computer keeps making double posts!

Last edited by heliocopters on 06 Nov 2009, 9:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

I do the "huh" or "what" if someone asks me something or tells me something. I hear them and i know what they said, but it takes a little for me to process it. The huh/what comes by habit, i guess? I suppose it buys me a little time to prepare a comment back. Weird, i have never disected this before. Never knew other people did this.

i've been look at CAPD for myself as well. when i was growing up i thought it was a problem with either not paying enough attention or maybe a problem with my hearing, but when im listening to something i can hear the individual words but they either dont make sense right away or i forget them in a matter of a few seconds. I also have the same problem that I cant tell where a particular sound is coming from.

The first time i really noticed this was when i was at a family party at a resturant, there was a crying baby and i though the cries were coming from somewhere in front of me. So naturally i was trying to find out which kid was crying but i couldnt see any babies in the area in front of me, only sleeping ones. when i asked one of my cousin's who was crying, he pointed behind me. I remember my first thought was, wtf why'd i think it was in front? after that i started paying more attention to similar sounds and found i was having the problem all the time. i notice it a lot when i'm in a vehicle and an emergency vehicle has its siren on, its very frustrating when you're the driver because i dont know what street theyre coming from or if i have to move to the side of the road.

Where i've been working for the past 4 years has probably made me more aware of my auditory processing problems than my years in school. when I first started working for them i was in the IT help desk where people would call in with problems with their computers. the constant ringing of the phones drove me craaazy....but i think that could be a sensory issue thing lol. anyways, when i'd be talking to someone trying to figure out what was wrong (and how to help them) i had to repeat what they told me a lot and have them confirm that what i was thinking was indeed correct. luckily, we had a program that allowed us to take control of their computer so after awhile i just started using that and told the person to show me what was happening. when i left that department i moved into a more quiet area...ironically (at least i think it is) i ended up having to work with corporate cellphones/blackberries. people started calling me directly and since i hated talking to people (since i couldnt remember/make out what they were saying) i turned the ringer off my desk phone and forced them to leave voicemails if they wanted to leave me a message...at least that way i can listen to the message a few times without asking the repeatedly if i was understanding correctly.

almost a year a go my work had changed my cubicle location and i'm now sitting next to the help desk that i used to work in and having a load of sensory problems and auditory processing problems. the helpdesk itself generates a lot of background noise and i also sit next to the door into the large room so i always hear people passing by and talking loudly. a lot of people now come to my desk to ask questions personally and because of the extra noise i either cant tell what they're saying or i forget within a minute of them leaving my cubicle. its very frustrating and i usually endup telling people to send me an email reminder before they leave because there's a high possibility i'd forget.

Also my coworkers noticed something weird that i myself have never noticed until they told me. i tend to use headphones a lot at work to try and drown out the excess bothersome noise, i find it helps keep me focused on what i'm doing instead of the various noises i hear around me. there are times where my coworkers sitting beind me will call my name to catch my attention but i dont hear them at all because of the headphones. however, if they whisper my name i can hear them as clearly as if i dont have my headphones on. I noticed something similar like this happening again today. i had my headphones on again and i kept hearing a beeping noise that was annoying the hell out of me so i kept taking them off but couldnt tell where the noise was coming from. it wasnt until the end of the day i found out that one of my coworkers was testing out a camera and the beeping noise was coming from when he was pressing the button on the camera to scroll through the pictures....and he was sitting about 10 feet away. some of the people sitting closer to him didnt even hear the beeps which i thought was weird.

i want to get tested for CAPD so i can maybe go to my work and see if i can get relocated to a different cubicle or maybe even an office where its closed off from the various and distracting noises that surround me now. anyone had any luck with their workplaces doing like that for them?

This is a huge problem for me. Half the time I don't even realize when someone is trying to talk to me. Even when I do, I often will be paying complete attention and literally have no idea what they're saying. Background noise exacerbates the problem, which is a huge issue at my job because we have a student lounge right outside the office. At this point my boss probably thinks I'm completely nutty because I insist on closing the door, which ruins the "welcoming atmosphere" she apparently wants. I feel kind of stupid explaining that I am unable to think about anything or talk to anyone with that level of background noise, as apparently no one else even notices. Under good conditions I have no problem hearing people, but there are usually a few moments of delay before the information hits my brain (especially true over the phone, which contributes to my hatred of it). I can't take notes, because if I look away from the speaker I will get lost completely. The thing I hate most, however, is having to ask someone to repeat something in the middle of a conversation, when they already have my attention and it makes NO sense as to why I wouldn't have heard something.

My dad is the same way, to the point where my mom insists on having eye contact before she'll say something important to him, so I don't think my parents ever thought it was much of a big deal. I had my hearing tested once because I thought my habit of mishearing words was due to something physical, but I was deemed perfectly fine. After that, up until I heard of CAPD I just assumed that I had a particularly bad attention span that kept me from paying attention to people even when I was trying to. I am not at all convinced that I have AS, but I'm definitely convinced that I have some kind of CAPD, and I have this site to thank for bringing that to my attention. Wish I could contribute more to the conversation about the hows and whys of CAPD, but I'm still learning myself

It's starting to seem to me like the majority of autistic spectrum people out there have auditory processing issues. Despite having good hearing, i've always had a harder time than most people around me with understanding people when they speak while there's a lot of surrounding noise, if they have a particularly low or high pitched voice, or don't pronounce words as clearly as i'm used to. And then even with people i'm used to hearing, words sometimes merge together in my head into something other than what they really said.

Wow I'm a bit surprised to see that you all seem to be alot like me, or vice versa. I also read last night after posting this they people with capd or apd are terrible note takers.... bingo. I can't seem to listen, write, and keep listening at the same time. Also, I keep wondering if it's part of the disorder that I will be trying to listen to someone but yet can't repeat back all of what they said to me. (Like with my therapist). That really embarrassed me. Plus later I recalled fragments of what he said I'm sure that's at least kinda normal, if you talk to someone for a whole hour you can't repeat verbatim everything they said, but still, he asked me right after he spoke for a couple minutes and I still couldn't. It's so frustrating. I felt like saying "I'm not stupid I swear Has anyone ever heard of any kind of treatments that could help it at all? I have a feeling there aren't any. Oh and I'm also bad at not even realizing people are talking to me. My coworkers get frustrated because they'll be standing behind me jabbering away and suddenly I turn around and say "huh?" I feel so bad, I don't do it on purpose, it's just hard for me when I'm working on something to listen and process what they're saying at the same time. I seem to have an issue with it even if I'm not doing anything, let alone.... well you get the idea! I just wish I could get tested and do something to help it. How does one get tested? I guess just ask your doctor? I don't want to feel like a hypochondriac.

i can hear only one thing at a time.

i can not watch tv and have a conversation, or even be asked a question. i think i am sometimes seen as rude because of this, it seems it is the usual thing to be able to audibly-multi-task.

if someone continually tries to talk to me while i am engaged in something to the point where i can not zone them out, i may snap at them.

trying to listen to two things at once feels like there is a sword fight going on in my mind and instead of words i just hear the 'clang clang' of swords and it is painful.

Just tell the GP you think you may have problems in auditory processing, and they can refer you to a specialist. They run a special 'CAP' test. They test things like dichotic listening (words played in both ears at the same time), hearing in noise, hearing degraded speech, auditory recall, etc. They also have to test your normal hearing ability as a control so it can take a while to get through all of it.

This site has some good info on APD. http://www.auditoryprocessing.com.au/

This page has info on the types and where the damage in the brain is. http://www.angelfire.com/bc2/capd5/

There are five subtypes commonly mentioned. I have Decoding Deficit which means i failed the hearing in noise and hearing degraded speech tests. Meaning if i miss something I cant fill in the gaps properly. Also, the subtypes of Integration Defecit and especially Prosodic Deficit may sound very familiar to someone with AS. The site says most kids have trouble in more than one area. Dunno if thats true but wouldnt surprise me.

Yes, it is often 'comorbid' with other disorders but can occur by itself if there is a history of chronic middle ear infections, or head injury, etc. Also related is that people with ASD seem to be prone to ear infections, but nobody knows why.

Ah, CAPD... Yes, that's always fun. I have a friend who actually uses sign language by preference to communicate because of CAPD and other hearing issues (poor girl has to lipread me; I can't do sign). If you can get to the point that you are for all practical purposes Deaf, you know it's not just some little quirk... I have CAPD myself, but only a mild version. It's really not uncommon to find this kind of thing on the spectrum; we've got dodgy sensory integration to begin with and it's not surprising that it extends to hearing.

I've always had these problems. I simply do not understand how anyone can hear someone speaking to them when there is background noise. It is such a relief at the end of the workday when the vents shut off. Up until then I'm all "Hah? What?" and have to depend on lipreading.