Possible Causes of Auditory Processing Disorder in Autism
Auditory processing disorders are fairly common in children with autism. The cause(s) are unknown, but there are some theories. One theory holds that the brain’s hippocampus, which is responsible for processing auditory information, could be less developed in people with autism.
Another possibility, according to researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is that children with autism are hearing normally, but are processing sound more slowly than non-autistic children.
In another theory, researchers at universities in Finland and the United States wrote that autistic children do not pay attention to certain sounds and that their attention shifts slowly. An interesting observation these researchers mentioned was that autistic children actually preferred odd sounds to the sound of their mother’s voice. At the same time, they paid attention to and understood music well.
To examine the question of whether sensory processing is impaired in children with autism, another study compared the responses of high-functioning autistic children to speech sounds (vowels) versus musical tones. The result was that sound processing and sound discrimination were found to be normal in autistic children. However, they did not pay attention to changes in speech.
Help for Autism and Auditory Processing Disorder
There are techniques and technologies available to help autistic children with auditory processing disorders, such as auditory integration training.
