Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a listening disability, or about having problems process what you hear. There a range of issues which can cause auditory processing disorders which is why the assessment and diagnostic process consists of a battery of tests. And each individual who has a diagnosis of APD will have different auditory processing issues, different severity of problems, and different alternative compensating skills and abilities. Can make life difficult and interesting when you are part of a family who all have APD.
APD is one of the underlying cognitive causes of developmental dyslexia. Those who have APD have problems identifying or processing the gaps between sounds, especially the gaps between sounds that can make up a word, or the gaps between words in rapid speech. This make learning to say new words difficult as we can not sound them out phonetically, we have to learn the whole sound of a new word. So When we learn to read we can only match the whole sound of a word to the whole graphic representation of the word. So we can not use phonics. We need an alternative such as whole word or even a kineasthetic approach to the teaching of reading. This a life long issue, I still have problems with new words, and APD can have problems with new forms of vocabulary, say when going to college, university or when starting a new job or new activity.
APDs who may be good at sport may have problems with team games such as soccer as we can have problems understanding the on field communications during a game from a coach or team mates, but sports such as athletics can more beneficial.
Those who have APD tend to have to approach or understand a topic from different perspective to understand it, especially those who are or become Visual spatial learners and think in pictures, we need to see the whole picture, and are not very good with a step by step approach to learning. So yes it takes longer but eventually we tend to have a better in depth knowledge of a subject or topic, than most others who grasped the basics quite quickly.
Bullying can be a problem, those who have APD need to be understood and be supported by their peers, it is a life long issue. We are not very good at self advocacy, and there will always be others who are better verbal advocates and we always loose a a debate no mater how good our case, because in a debate we have problems processing what is being said, the same applies to online chat rooms.
You might find the UK APD and APDUK links lists provides some more information. The teachers and support teams, etc they may find the CiteULike research paper sharing Group Audiology and Auditory Processing Disorder library currently 480 articles provides a great deal of research based information.
All of my family have a clinical diagnosis of APD, 3 DSs my DW, and me.