Your ear drum and canal are essential to receiving sounds from the world around you, but they are just the first stage of the hearing process. It is ultimately the job of the brain to make sense of the information that is being transmitted from auditory nerves in the ear. If there is a problem with the hearing center of the brain, it may be hard for you to understand speech or differentiate sounds. Tests for central auditory processing check the health of this neurological system.
Testing will evaluate your ability to listen, understand and remember. With a healthy auditory system, you should be able to remember the sequence and relative distance of sounds (auditory sequential memory and figure-ground perception). The hearing center should successfully filter out extraneous noise to focus on conversations. In addition, the tests gauge the ability of the ears to coordinate with each other and integrate the disparate sounds each receives. You should also be able to detect rhythms and other patterns in sound, and discern pitch and intonation in language.