Behavioral assessment of children at the risk of central auditory processing disorder without reading deficits.

Abstract

Background: Auditory processing abilities in children with dyslexia and reading disabilities have been widely studied using various behavioral and electrophysiological measures. However explorations in children with (C)APD without reading disa-bility are lacking, and the present study was designed to fill that gap.Materials and method: The study comprised an experimental group and a control group, the former having 15 children at risk of (C)APD without reading difficulties and the latter 15 typically developing children. Behavioral tests for (C)APD were ad-ministered to participants in both groups, and included the gap detection test (GDT), pitch pattern test (PPT), dichotic con-sonant vowel test (DCV), speech perception in noise (SPIN), and masking level difference (MLD) test.Results: Children who were at risk of (C)APD without reading deficit displayed higher thresholds in GDT and gained poor-er scores on PPT as well as SPIN when compared to the group of typically developing children. However, the performance on MLD and DCV were comparable between the groups.Conclusions: The present study suggests a combination of GDT, PPT, and SPIN as a possible sensitive tool in clinics for in-dicating central auditory deficits in children at risk of (C)APD without reading deficits. DCV and MLD were not sensitive.