APD

Auditory processing disorder is an specific learning difficulty that few people have heard of. It causes problems for students when listening in lecturers, working in groups, and attending seminars. The main problems caused by APD are:

• being unable to tell which sound comes before another
• having difficulty in distinguishing similar sounds from one another (such as "seventy" and "seventeen")
• being unable to pinpoint a sound

One of the problems I have is being able to prioritise one sound over another. This means that if I am in a lecture noises such as people rustling paper, or scraping their chairs distracts me and I lose focus. Another problem I have is if lots of people are talking, for example in a seminar. When this happens I get confused and lose the thread of the conversation. Because APD is so unusual, when I tell lecturers of these problems I feel that they don't get it and don't really know what to do to make it better. An example of this was when I had lectures in an uncarpeted lecture theatre. My lecturer just didn't get why the echoing in the theatre was having such an impact. I sometimes wish I had dyslexia, because most people have heard of it and know what to do to help.

My advice to university staff is to learn a little about APD so that they can help students with this difficulty. This website is really good and provides lots of advice for a teaching environment: http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/2324-how-to-help-your-student-with-an-auditory-processing-disorder-
As the site suggests, there are lots of things that can be done that done take up too much time, such as limiting background noise, using multi sensory learning and ensuring the student sits at the front where possible.

For students who think they may have APD, I would advise talking to your doctor about getting a referral to a clinical audiologist. Once you have a diagnosis you can  access specialist support at the university, which I have found to make a real difference to my studies. (Katie, computer science student)