Background

Auditory processing disorders (APD) result from dysfunctions of processes dedicated to audition and affect processing of information in the auditory modality. Children with APD exhibit symptoms similar to those with attention deficit disorders (ADHD). With regard to therapeutic strategies it seems mandatory to employ diagnostic procedures able to differentiate between APD and ADHD. Recently it was found that auditory evoked neutral condition event-related potentials (NC-ERP) correlate with results from psychoacoustic measures suitable to unveil dysfunctions of auditory processing, thus confirming APD. Here we investigated whether NC-ERP may be used as a tool to differentiate between APD and ADHD.

Methods

In a retrospective analysis, NC-ERP data from 99 children with (+ ADHD) and 43 without ADHD symptoms (-ADHD) were examined. All patients suffered from symptoms consistent with information processing deficits in the auditory modality. Analysis of variance was applied.

Results

+ ADHD children and-ADHD children did not show a significantly different distribution pattern of pathological NC-ERP.

Discussion

Since the probability of pathological NC-ERP is equally distributed in children with or without ADHD, all of whom suffered from auditory processing deficits, it seems fair to conclude that NC-ERP are not suitable to differentiate between APD and ADHD. This may be due to methodological limitations. Alternatively, APD and ADHD may indeed be overlapping entities with a common yet unidentified origin.