Hearing Loss
HEARING LOSS

I can hear, but don’t understand. Why

2014-11-26

For the majority of individuals with a hearing loss, two things are happening, often at the same time.


First it’s unusual to lose the ability to hear equally across all frequencies (pitches). Typically you lose higher frequencies first. The higher frequencies are where many consonant sounds can be found. In all likelihood what you’re able to hear are a lot of vowel sounds and lower frequency consonant sounds (for example m, b, p) and what you’re not able to hear are the higher pitched consonant sounds (for example s, t, c, f, th, sh). In other words depending on your hearing loss, you’re hearing far less than 100% of every word. The effect of a high frequency loss is that you may be able to decifer what a person is talking about in a complete sentence but that may not always be the case.

Secondly you may face is a less than ideal signal to noise ratio. The signal to noise ratio is essentially the level or volume of what you want to hear compared to the level or volume of what you don’t want to hear. As the noise level increases, the signal to noise ratio becomes poorer and the sounds you were barely able to hear before are becoming much more difficult to hear. The percentage of every word you hear is declining and as it declines so does your ability to figure out or to understand what someone is saying.
Hearing loss comes is many variations.

Unless you’re an audiologist, when you think of hearing loss, severe hearing loss or deafness probably come to mind. But mild, moderate and high frequency hearing losses are actually much more common. With these hearing losses, the only symptom may be subtle difficulty with word understanding, especially in situations where there is competing noise.

Certain voices or words may be sound garbled, as if others are mumbling. At times, you may play the television and radio at louder than normal volume levels, but still some words may not come through clearly. Hearing on the telephone may be difficult sometimes, especially if the person on the other end has an accent. Music may sound distorted at times, even when the overall volume of the music is comfortable, leading to a decreased enjoyment of music.

Other symptoms of hearing loss may include asking people to repeat what they say, perception of people not speaking clearly, difficulty with women’s and children’s voices, and difficulty hearing when the person speaking is at a distance. In general, in situations where there is background noise – such as in restaurants, family gatherings, parties, etc. – hearing (or rather, understanding what is said) is much more difficult for people with hearing loss.

If you have difficulty understanding words, voices or conversations at times when others around you don’t seem to be having difficulty, you may have a hearing loss. In this case, a comprehensive hearing evaluation by a professional is recommended.

Our owner, Robert Hutchcraft, explains why you can hear sound but not understand what is being said. This video talks about how hearing loss starts out.

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