Symptoms Of Auditory Processing Disorder

Difficulty Staying Focused

A difficulty staying focused is the symptom that often causes individuals with an auditory processing disorder to get misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or a similar condition. Individuals often assume the patient is simply not listening or paying attention because they seem to have no clue what was being said just moments before. However, the reality is an individual with auditory processing difficulties may not be able to focus on one specific thing because of an issue with figure-to-ground discrimination. This is essentially an inability to distinguish between background noise and other sounds. For example, a child might not be able to hear a teacher in a class over the sound of a classmate flipping pages in a book. Since background noises can be so amplified and distracting, it can be hard for a person with an auditory processing disorder to do anything that requires focus. Just quietly working in a typical office environment might be as distracting as trying to calculate a budget in the middle of a nightclub with blaring music.