Imagine an infant who has problems “taking in” auditory information.  Ordinary speech simply passes her by.  But because the problem is not readily apparent, her parents don’t realize it exists.  Instead, when their baby fails to respond to their eager calls they come to feel rejected.  Bit by bit they stop trying so hard to woo her, and the child is left more and more to her inner world.  If the child’s problem is not detected, her ability to form warm and loving relationships and to communicate may be comprised. 

Now imagine a child who has mild problems processing auditory information.  He is unable to organize auditory signals into meaningful patterns.  This child hears his mother call his name, followed by a long string of commands, but he is unable to decipher her meaning.  When after several repetitions he fails to do as she directed, his mother grows annoyed.  Unaware of her son’s problem, she misinterprets his behavior as defiance and responds to him with anger.  The child’s problem in one area creates a problem with interaction that complicates his relationship with his parents.

A child with a severe auditory-processing problem, who doesn’t understand most of what is said to him, may experience even greater problems with interaction.  To him the world may be a hostile place, filled with sounds that make demands on him but to which he can’t respond.  He may come to feel shut out from the world of people, or, worse, people may seem frightening, always yelling because he is so often angering and disappointing them.  Gradually he may draw more and more into himself and into the world of silent, inanimate objects.  Here at least he can feel safe and secure.  When this child is brought to a clinician he may be uncommunicative and unrelated.  Even if he feels secure, a child with severe auditory-processing problems may find it hard to comprehend other people’s words and may therefore not progress to two-way symbolic communication and the ability to form abstract ideas.

A child with a visual processing problem may exhibit a very different type of behavior.  Because visual information helps us form mental images of things, it is an important component of a child’s ability to organize behavior and see the big picture.  Without this ability a child may be easily distracted or get lost in details.  Her capacity for problem solving and abstract thinking may be affected.  The ability to visualize may also help children calm themselves.  In times of stress a child can picture Mommy in her mind and use that mental image to soothe herself.  But a child who can’t process visual information can’t easily form mental images.  For her, once Mommy is gone from the room, Mommy may cease to exist.  As a result, this child may suffer from extreme separation anxiety and sleep problems, may be excessively demanding, and later in life may become depressed when confronting strong feelings and conflict because she loses the inner image associated with being loved and can’t easily reconstruct it.

It is also possible to have trouble processing at more cognitive levels.  Children with cognitive-processing impairments may have difficulty in the realm of ideas.  They may have trouble forming abstract ideas (visualizing things that are not right in front of them) or making connections between ideas (understanding when two or more abstract ideas are related).  They may have difficulty learning language because language requires abstract thinking, using words to stand for things.  Children with cognitive-processing problems may be labeled mentally retarded, cognitively delayed, or language delayed. 

The area of processing that is most overlooked is affective, or emotional processing.  The child who has affective-processing difficulties faces challenges reading other people’s emotional signals.  He might cower in the classroom when the teacher talks loudly, believing that the teacher is angry and about to punish him.  or he might misread another child’s helpful offer to push the swing as a hostile gesture and rebuff the other child or start to cry.  Or he may interpret another child’s cry as a warning of attack and attack the other child first.  The world may be a frightening place.  From hugs to back pats, smiles to frowns, laughs to cries, the child may feel besieged by sensations that he doesn’t understand.  And when he responds, often in unexpected ways, his response unleashes more confusing input as the person with whom he’s interacting responds to him.  Trapped in this escalating dialogue, the child can easily feel out of control and may react with tantrums, inappropriate body movements, or flight.

Problems in the motor system can also create challenges to interaction and communication.  Imagine an infant who, because of poor control of the muscles in her neck, is slow to turn her head when her parents approach.  Unaware of the problem, her parents view this “indifference” as a sign of rejection.  Gradually, without really meaning to, they stop trying so hard to win her attention.  Yet without her parents’ encouragement she will have difficulty learning to form close and loving relationships.

Sometimes the problems are more subtle.  Imagine a child with poor muscle tone who can walk, but not well, who can use his arms, but not easily.  Place this child in preschool, where children naturally run and push, hug and hit, and what will happen to his sense of self?  Unable to keep up with the other children or defend himself from their assaults, he may become passive, avoidant, and self-absorbed; alternatively, he may become overly assertive and aggressive.  The signals he sends out may tell the other children to stay away from him, further disrupting his peer interactions.

Sometimes even a child’s positive responses can cause social problems.  A child with poor motor control who is excited about her coming turn on the slide may flap her arms or rock her head.  To other children these gestures of excitement may look strange, or even scary, and they may back off or grow defensive, again disrupting the development of peer relationships.