The following are examples of some of the common features of CAPDs. Some speech sounds are distorted. When you talk to someone with a foreign accent you must make a series of mental adjustments to understand. We suspect that some children with persistent speech articulation problems are saying the words as they hear them. Imagine how school would be if you couldn't trust your hearing-if you had to deal with different distortions with different speakers but were still expected to follow a classroom discussion.
Background noise is too loud.
When we strain to follow a conversation at a large party we are experiencing the effects of having too much extraneous sound delivered to our conscious awareness. One way we survive is by pinpointing the location of the voice we want to pay attention to and neurologically suppressing some of the sounds coming in from other locations. If that example seems extreme, picture yourself trying to balance your checkbook with merely the TV going and two other people making occasional remarks. You may have heard every word yet not been able to visualize the driving route, or you may realize that by tomorrow you won't remember all the parts of the work operation. These are some of the ingredients to the social problems we see in children who mean well but have trouble making and keeping friends.