The Prevalence of Auditory Processing Disorder in Children From Lower Grades of Primary School

Abstract

The auditory processing disorder refers to perceptual difficulties in the process of auditory informations in CNS, which are manifested by poor performance in one or more abilities of auditory processing. The research is conducted with a purpose of determining the prevalence of auditory processing disorder in children from fourth grade of primary school. The basic statistical set from which the pattern for this research is chosen, was made of students aged from 9,5 to 10,5. The pattern was consisted of 95 students, both genders, and the ratio of male to female respondents was 48,4:51,6%. On the Filtered Words subtest, students achieved the average result of 26,63 with standard deviation of 4,45. On the Auditory Figure-Ground subtest, they achieved the average result of 23,83 with standard deviation of 2,96. On the Competing Words subtest, the average result of 45,49 with standard deviation of 9,56 was achieved, while on Competing Sentences subtest, the average result was 17,56 with standard deviation of 3,24. 8,4% of this group students achieved the result lower than two standard deviations on at least two subtests, which is, by test, defined as auditory processing disorder, and the ratio girl to boy is 1:3. It can be stated that in the recent period, there is an increasment in the prevalence of APD in school children, primarily because of attention focus on this problem.