Portland Auditory Processing Diagnostics

Because Portland APD is only operating on a limited schedule, only persons over the age of 12 are accepted for evaluations. For APD evaluations of children under the age of 12, you can contact Judith Belk at Center for Communication and Learning Skills in Lake Oswego: 503-699-9022 or at

Center for Communication & Learning Skills Care for all ages. We serve infants, preschoolers, children, teens and adults with mild to severe problems with speech, language, learning, listening/auditory processing, sound hypersensitivity, reading, thinking, attention, memory, concentration, motivation, and achievement.

Portland APD offers evaluations of auditory processing skills to adults (which we define as someone over the age of 12). At Portland APD testing is done on Wednesdays in the afternoon, and usually takes about three hours. Portland APD is a participating provider for Providence, Regence (BCBS) and Moda health insurances. If you have another insurance you can pay privately and you will be given an invoice that you can submit to your health insurance company for reimbursement. You can call 503-806-1498 to arrange an appointment. Our hours are limited, so please leave a voicemail with a phone number to call you back. Leaving your email address also helps, as it is a good way to set up a time to talk over the telephone about arranging the evaluation appointment.

If you suspect you might have an auditory processing disorder, the first step is to verify that you do not actually have a hearing loss. You want your hearing ability to be tested by an audiologist (an audiogram). If you have a hearing loss, then follow that audiologist's recommendations for hearing aids or other medical examinations. If your hearing test is "normal" (normal audiogram), then you may want to schedule an evaluation of auditory processing skills.

When someone wants to hear one particular conversation when there are many conversations going on at the same time, the two ears must cooperate. Both cochleas (where the hair cells are that pick up the frequencies of sound) may be working fine, but when the sound signals pass through the auditory pathway (a set of nerves and way stations that start at the cochlea and pass through different areas of the brain before landing in the auditory cortex where the signals are decoded) if the cooperation between the two ears is not typical, the signal that arrives at the brain may be distorted and not understood. There is a lot of redundancy in the auditory pathway. If if there is inefficiency between the two ears, speech in a quiet environment can be understood. But if there is a poor signal (like speech over a cell phone) or multiple simultaneous signals (speech in noisy environment), the signal that arrives at the cortex of the brain may not be easily decipherable. This has been a reason for a lot of problems for people with APD: their audiograms are "normal" and they are often told they have no hearing problem. Their difficulties don't show up until they are tested with more complex stimuli. The testing done during an APD evaluation is NOT the same testing done during an audiogram. We test to see if the two ears are working together, and we test using distorted speech to see where the breakdown occurs. People with APD do not have normal hearing, even though they typically have normal hearing thresholds or normal ability to understand speech in quiet.

The term "Auditory Processing Disorder" is not well understood. People with APD usually have normal ability to hear soft sounds ("normal thresholds") but have difficulty with higher-level hearing, such as comprehending speech in noise, understanding distorted speech, or localizing the source of sound.