Assessing Auditory Processing in Children with Listening Difficulties: A Pilot Study

Background: Auditory processing disorders (APD) may be one of the problems experienced by children with listening difficulties (LiD). The combination of auditory behavioural and electrophysiological tests could help to provide a better understanding of the abilities/disabilities of children with LiD. The current study aimed to quantify the auditory processing abilities and function in children with LiD. Methods: Twenty children, ten with LiD (age = 8.46; SD = 1.39) and ten typically developing (TD) (age = 9.45; SD = 1.57) participated in this study. All children were evaluated with auditory processing tests as well as with attention and phonemic synthesis tasks. Electrophysiological measures were also conducted with click and speech auditory brainstem responses (ABR). Results: Children with LiD performed significantly worse than TD children for most behavioural tasks, indicating shortcomings in functional auditory processing. Moreover, the click-ABR wave I amplitude was smaller, and the speech-ABR waves D and E latencies were longer for the LiD children compared to the results of TD children. No significant difference was found when evaluating neural correlates between groups. Conclusions: Combining behavioural testing with click-ABR and speech-ABR can highlight functional and neurophysiological deficiencies in children with learning and listening issues, especially at the brainstem level.