Expert: Norm Bishop - 8/22/2008

Question
I've been told, at no surprise to me, that my son has an auditory processing disorder.  It seems his problem is in recall time being delayed.  However, my question is, how does a visual-spatial disorder relate to auditory processing disorders.  When I do the research, my son seems to meet more bullets on the check list for visual spatial disorder that auditory processing.

Answer
Both disorders are within brain functioning.  We don't know that there is damage to the brain or if it is simply a difference in how the brain processes things.  Some of the symptoms are similar to both disorders, however different parts of the brain seem to be active when the problem occurs.  His problem may be more within language processing rather than simply auditory processing.

For example, I have auditory processing problems, simply that in a crowd I hear all the sounds at the same level, thus can't concentrate on my conversation well because there are 19 other conversations imputing my brain at the same time.  In normal quiet situations, I have very little difficulty.  In addition, I have difficulty with spatial relations, things like knowing left from right without thinking about it, directionality (like north and south without a reference point, inverting things into new shape in my head, etc.).  With those weaknesses, however, come extreme strengths...thus every persons brain is unique, and weaknesses indicate strengths...we need to find those and learn to compensate for the weaknesses.

There is a lot of information about this at HTTP://www.ldonline.org

Norm