Persons with APD will likely show some of the following symptoms.  Remember a person with APD has normal hearing.  They will pass a hearing test; yet, will have problems with certain aspects of how hearing is processed.

• Don’t hear subtle differences between sounds in words.
• Find it difficult to tell what direction sounds are coming from.
• Have trouble blocking out background noise when they are in a noisy setting.
• Find it hard to follow conversations.
• Easily distracted due to difficulty processing oral information.
• Ask for things to be repeated frequently.
• Difficulty with reading and spelling because of trouble processing and interpreting sounds.
• Mispronouncing similar sounding words (three/free, celery/salary, bog/bag, chop/shop)
• Processes information slowly and has trouble comprehending rapid speech.
• Figurative language may be tricky.
• Difficulty following conversations.
• Following spoken directions is difficult – especially multi-step directions.
• Hyper-sensitive hearing.
• Articulation problems when speaking.
• Musical ability can be poor.
• Avoiding social conversations (telling stories and jokes) because it’s hard to process spoken words and construct appropriate responses in a timely manner.