One area of auditory processing discussed that is often misunderstood by non-professionals is called auditory temporal processing deficits. The word temporal refers to the time aspect of auditory messages. There are numerous timing factors related to what we hear such as:

• Long sound like /s/ or /h/ vs. short sounds like /t/ or /g/
• Amount of time for one sound blending into the next blending into the next such as "c" "a" "t" in which the first consonant has a quick (short) change to the vowel, and the vowel has a long change to the final consonant
• The length of time between sounds indicating whether the sounds are part of the same word or part of different words. Compare the two utterances: "The cat sat" vs. "The cats at" (Notice that in both phrases, there is the same sequence of speech sounds or phonemes, but it is the longer pause between the "s" and the "a" in the second phrase that indicates, auditorily, that the "s" is part of the preceding word, cats in that phrase and part of the word sat in the first phrase.
• The length of time between sounds that can change the meaning of the utterance. Consider the sentence "Look out the door." If the pauses between words are the same, the meaning is for you to visually look out of the door. But, if the pause between "out" and "the" is longer (in writing, indicated as "Look out! The door!"), the meaning would be to watch out, the door may hit you.

In order to simulate temporal processing problems, two simulations are presented. In the first, the timing deficit will be at the speech sound (or letter) level. To present this first simulation the material will be typed with errors representing problems a child with APD may have because some speech sounds are so quick, they are missed. An example of this would be hearing a word with a consonant blend, but not being able to process the rapid speed of changes in speech sounds so that some of the consonants are not processed. For example, imagine the word "star" being spoken, but the rapid changes from the "s" to the "t" to the "a" cause the listener with APD to miss the "t" and only process "sar" wondering what does that mean? In the second simulation, the timing error is between words and sentences to such a degree that long words will be broken up into multiple words, and some words will be blended together to form new, longer words. Additionally, errors in processing will cause sentences to be processed where there are no sentences, and sentences to be blended together when there should have been multiple sentences.

(View lyrics used for simulation.)

This third simulation of auditory temporal processing problems presents what may happen when pauses are not appropriately interpreted and meaning is changes as in the example presented above, "Look out the door." For this simulation, the grouping of words has been changed in an attempt to throw off the meaning of the message. The actual message may be easy for you to understand as it is well known. However, see how sentence spacing, commas, and periods being placed incorrectly change the meaning.

                   Oh!

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