Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

I have a question about hearing strategies. Say you’re in a room and you’re trying to understand something. I’m wondering if I should learn how to read lips. It doesn’t seem like it could hurt. Do you need to take a course, or just practice?

How about if you try and guess what’s just been said? I find I do this. After I hear someone say something, and I don’t quite get it all, my brain reviews possibilities until it matches one that makes sense in the context of the situation and what else has been said.

By all means learn to speechread! Speechreading is most important in helping you understand speech better. I have been speechreading all my life. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the floor and staring up at the faces of those giant people (parents) towering above me (at least they sure seemed tall to me way back then) and watching their faces so I could understand what they were saying.

Both my younger daughter and I became good speechreaders when we were tiny tikes. It was a coping strategy we both just naturally picked up from necessity at a very early age. We were both good speechreaders by the time we were 3 or 4.

To become good at speechreading you need to practice. In fact, you need lots of practice. If you are around me you’ll notice I always “stare” at the person with whom I am conversing. That is how I hear and understand what they are saying. Of course, I’m using my residual hearing too, but I’ve constantly been “practicing” speechreading for more than 60 years now.

Taking a speechreading course can help you fast-track your speechreading skills and get you on the right track. Unfortunately, speechreading classes are hard to find—but if you have one in your area, by all means enroll in one.

If there aren’t any speechreading classes near you, all is not lost. There are some good speechreading CDs available so you can practice in the privacy of your own home in front of your computer. This way you can practice at your own convenience and for as long or short a time as you want. Furthermore, your computer will never get tired or exasperated at you if you make a mistake, or ask it to repeat something a “million times”!

Probably the best speechreading CD around is the Seeing and Hearing Speech CD program.

Speechreading is not perfect by any means. The best estimates are that only around 30% to 35% of English sounds can be speechread. That leaves a lot of room for educated guessing. The more you know of the structure of English, and the topic under discussion, the better your “educated guessing” becomes.

When we speechread, our brains run through the possibilities we see and hear and tries to give us the most likely word we missed. However, it can come up with completely wrong solutions because of several factors.

For example, if we don’t know the context, we can’t put things in context to get the right word. Or, if we have the wrong context, our brains will try to fit what we see (speechread) into this “wrong” context and come up with totally “off the wall” solutions as to what has just been said.

Furthermore, many words in English have identical mouth shapes, although the words sound different (if you could hear them). Thus depending on your mindset at the moment, you may “see” a different word than what was said—and again come up with an “off the wall” interpretation.

We call such words homophenes. The three words “pat”, “bat” and “mat” are examples of homophenes. So are the words “shoot”, “shoes”, “chews”, “juice” and “Jews”. So are the words “queen” and “quiet”. You cannot tell these words apart unless you can either hear the difference, or you are sure you know the context.

“Is this process made easier if you know what sounds people with a rare hearing loss such as a reverse slope hearing loss often miss? So you think, ‘well, I usually can’t hear these sounds, so chances are the word I missed was _____.”

You know, in all the years I have been speechreading myself and all the years I have been teaching and writing about speechreading, this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone ask this question. It’s a wonderful question—and just as those of us with severe reverse slope hearing losses hear “backwards” to those with the common ski-slope losses, so also we also speechread “backwards”—thus there are notable differences. Let me explain.

People with the common ski-slope hearing losses hear lower frequency sounds reasonably well, but do not hear high- frequency sound well or at all.

Furthermore, you need to realize that most of the “power” or volume of speech is contained in the lower-frequency sounds, while most of the “intelligence” in speech is carried in the higher- frequency sounds.

Since people with ski-slope losses hear the lower-frequency sounds, but not the higher-frequency sounds, they generally hear people talking, but can’t understand what they are saying.

This is where speechreading helps them. You see, typically, the higher frequency sounds such as “s”, “f”, “th”, “ch” and “t” (all air hissing around your teeth with your voice box turned off) are relatively easy to see so you can speechread them well. Thus you can fill in the missing “intelligence sounds” and understand what the person is saying.

In contrast, those of us with severe reverse-slope hearing losses don’t hear the lower-frequency sounds (which are formed in the middle or back of the mouth so are hard or impossible to speechread), but we hear the higher-frequency sounds which are also relatively easy to speechread, thus we have more difficulty in speechreading. As a result, we have to concentrate on learning to speechread the “difficult” sounds in order to become good speechreaders.

In any case, even though speechreading is more difficult for us, it is still an indispensable skill to have, and one I’d never want to be without.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A new study by the University of East Anglia has revealed the surprising results that computers are now better at lip-reading (speechreading) than humans are. In one demonstration. the computers recognized 80% of the words presented, whereas the 19 human speechreaders only recognized 32% of the words. (1) That is a remarkably significant difference.

Even more surprising is the fact that with just four hours of training, the computers helped the human speechreaders markedly improve their lip-reading skills. This new research opens the way for teaching hard of hearing people improved speechreading skills that will improve their accuracy dramatically.

Looking into the future, I can foresee the day when a hard of hearing or deaf person, using a video camera attached to their laptop will be able to talk with a hearing person via their laptop. The laptop will speechread the person and print what they say on the screen with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Unlike speech recognition software, which listens to the person speaking and converts their speech to text, this speechreading software converts facial (mouth) movements to text. Thus, it works just as well in noisy places as in quiet situations, whereas the speech to text software requires relatively quiet situations so that it can hear human speech over the noise.

(1) University of East Anglia (2009, September 13). Findings Could Lead To Improved Lip-reading Training For The Deaf And Hard-of-hearing. ScienceDaily.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

Is there anywhere on the web, or a resource that you could direct me to, where I can learn to improve my lip reading skills?

The real secret to becoming better at speechreading (lip reading is the older term) is to always “stare” at the person to whom you are talking. In other words, practice, practice, practice. I’ve been doing this all my life. That’s how I
learned.

You may find it helpful to read my article on speechreading. However, if you want to really speed things up, there is an excellent speechreading CD available to help you improve your speechreading skills.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

One lady asked,

I was wondering if it is possible to speech read what people are saying if you can’t hear them at all? I am finding that if I can hear them even a little bit, I can speech read a lot of what they are saying. but if I can’t hear them at all, I have a real hard time making out words. Does this make sense?

You are right on target. You can often speechread short remarks quite well without hearing a sound, but for longer conversations even a bit of hearing makes understanding ever so much easier.

For example, studies have shown that by using residual hearing alone, or speechreading alone, you might get about 20-30% of the conversation, but when using both your residual hearing and speechreading at the same time, you can expect to get 80% or even more. This is my experience also.

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote:

My hearing has decreased considerably these past few years. I ordered your “Seeing and Hearing Speech” CD recently to help me understand conversations better. I have been trying to read peoples’ lips for some time now and the lessons are helping, although I am still on the vowels.

Personally, I’d start with the easier consonants, then go to the harder consonants and finally to the vowels—or do some of each. That way you will seem to progress faster. The consonants are typically easier to speechread as you watch for the movement of the lips and jaw. Vowels have no movement in themselves. They are formed by the shape of the mouth.

This lady continues: “I feel I make who ever I am listening to uncomfortable because I avoid eye contact in trying to read their lips.”

You should be looking at both the speaker’s eyes and mouth when you are speechreading. Don’t just focus on the mouth. You get a lot of information from the eyes too. In fact, I have a lot of difficulty speechreading people when they are wearing sunglasses. So do other speechreaders I’ve talked to. My solution? As funny as it sounds, I ask them to take off their sunglasses so I can hear them better!

You can learn more about speechreading in my article on “Speechreading” and more about the “Seeing and Hearing Speech” CD program by clicking on the above links.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

I would like to know what you have to say about how to learn speechreading. Is there a particular technique? Is there a book?

Speechreading is an excellent coping strategy, however, you can’t really learn to speechread from a book. You need to see people’s lips in action. Of course, you can learn a number of good things about speechreading from books—but that is not learning to speechread.

What you need is either live classes (if you can find them—they are not always easy to find in any given location) or do the next best thing and learn via CDs or video tapes.

One big advantage of CDs over video tapes is that the programs on the CDs can be interactive, whereas the video tapes do not provide any feedback. Furthermore CDs make it very easy to repeat a segment/question to increase learning.

One CD program that I find particularly good is the excellent “Seeing and Hearing Speech” program.
 

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked:

Is there any difference between lipreading and speechreading?

Yes and no. How’s that for an answer?

Technically, lipreading is watching the lips to extract whatever speech information you can, while speechreading is watching the lips, tongue, teeth, cheeks, eyes, facial expressions, gestures, body language and anything else that gives clues as to what the person is saying. Thus speechreading encompasses lipreading, plus much more.

For example, a person impatiently drumming her fingers on the table, a person nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot, a person pointing at a certain place or a person with a quizzical expression on his face certainly aren’t part of lipreading, but they are part of speechreading as these actions are all part of what the person is communicating.

Looking at it from the historical perspective gives a totally different answer. This is because speechreading is the newer term now used in the USA and Canada for what we formerly called lipreading. You see, in the UK, they still use the older term lipreading, but they really mean speechreading. Furthermore, those of us who have talked about lipreading for the past several decades find it difficult to give up this term. For example, while I try to use the term speechreading, at times I slip up and revert to calling it lipreading. Thus, in practical terms lipreading and speechreading both really refer to the same thing.

To learn more about speechreading, read our article Speechreading (Lipreading).

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked:

What I would like to know is how would I find a local class that teaches speechreading. I am on a fixed income and cannot afford the CD.

The best way to learn to speechread is to find a class that teaches speechreading. Unfortunately, these are few and far between in my experience.

I suggest that you ask around at the HLAA (SHHH) chapter nearest you. If there are any speechreading classes going on, they should know about it. Go to http://www.hearingloss.org/StateChap/states_and_chapters.html and click on the state you live in. It lists all the chapters in that state. Contact the chapter of your choice for more information.

Apart from a live class, I think the next best solution is to get the CD called “Seeing and Hearing Speech“. This is an excellent tool to learn speechreading right in the privacy of your own home. All you need is the CD and your computer. You can also learn more about speechreading in my article at Speechreading.

If you cannot afford the above excellent CD, I suggest that you join the Captioned Media Program at http://www.cfv.org. The only requirements are that you live in the USA, and that you are either deaf or hard of hearing.

If you have a VCR, you could borrow their 6 tape set of speechreading videos called “Read My Lips” (#9366 in their catalogue). A nice thing is that they pay the postage both ways so won’t cost you a cent!

I suggest that you just borrow one or two of these tapes to start with to see what you think. There is a lot of stuff on them–and you want to practice with them quite a bit before you advance to the next tapes.

You can register and then watch these tapes on-line too if you like. I have tried it in the past, but wasn’t successful in getting it to work then. You may have better luck than me.

You’ll find these tapes are helpful, but to me they are quite boring in contrast to the versatile CD mentioned above, but at least the price is right!