Why Do People Still Have Problems Understanding Speech When Wearing Hearing Aids?
by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A man wrote:
My question is about hearing aid effectiveness. I notice that some people talk about having hearing aids but still having problems hearing. At the price that hearing aids go for, while I don’t expect to have Superman’s hearing, I thought I would be getting rid of the mumbles. I would expect issues such as background noise, certain sounds amplified that you don’t want to hear etc, but I do expect to understand what people are saying at a conversational level, even on the phone. Why are people having problems understanding conversational speech?
That is a good question. Let me explain. You need to realize that when hearing loss occurs, a number of things happen.
First, obviously, there is a hearing loss. If this was all that happened, then hearing aids could easily fix this problem by providing exactly the right amount of amplification at each frequency to make up for the hearing loss.
But this is not all that happens. Coupled with hearing loss is a decrease in the ability to discriminate between similar sounds. Thus speech, even when at a comfortably loud level, sounds “fuzzy” or “muddy”. You hear people talking, but just can’t quite understand what they are saying. Amplifying this just makes louder “fuzzy”. It does little to make it clearer.
It’s analogous to wearing glasses. If your glasses are ground wrong (fuzzy) you see everything fuzzy. But if your glasses are ground correctly, you expect to see clearly. But this does not always happen because the “fuzzy” may be in the lens of your eye. The light passes clearly though your glasses, but then gets “messed up” as it passes through your “fuzzy” lens.
This is exactly what happens with hearing. The amplified sounds may pass clearly through your hearing aids–but then they hit the “fuzzy” cochlea and you hear distorted speech. This is not the fault of the hearing aids, but of a damaged auditory system.
This is why we call hearing aids “hearing aids“—they are aids to better hearing, not the cure for poor hearing.
The worse your discrimination scores, the less you can expect hearing aids alone to help you. For example, with my hearing aids, my discrimination is approximately 62% or so. This means that out of every 100 words spoken, and when amplified properly for my hearing loss, I still don’t understand 38 of them. That is why I always speechread at the same time—to fill in the “fuzzy” words.
September 21st, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Understanding Speech Problems is mine type of problem uhm how should i start, uhm im 16 years old and i can hear people what they say my hearing is good BUT here the thing i cant understand, man im 16 years old and i have spoken my countries language nearly my whole life, this is a fact also 2 years ago i was reading on a train suddenly i could understand everything poeple was saying but 2-3 weeks later i coould understand nothing oo please whats the problem . i can explain more if you send me a answer on this please, how to listen what to listen for should i listen for the Beginnings of a word?? or should i hear and then see pictures in my head for understanding, also that way with the picture stuff it works BUT i having problem listening to facts.please help meee
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hi Sonny Boy:
If you have problems understanding speech, the first thing I’d do is go to an audiologist and have a complete audiological evaluation which includes hearing testing. From what you say, it seems you likely have a high-frequency hearing loss.
The most common reason for having trouble understanding speech when you can hear speech, is that you have a high frequency hearing loss.
You see, most of the “intelligence” of speech lies in the higher frequencies, while most of the volume of speech lies in the lower frequencies. Thus if you have a high-frequency loss (very common as a result of noise damage), you hear people talking (because you hear the low-frequency sounds well), but you can’t understand what they are saying (because you don’t hear the high-frequency sounds well anymore).
July 8th, 2011 at 4:40 am
I have same problem as sonny boy above mention.. i went to ENT specialist and i recoverd a lot of my hearing but i still have problem in comprehending what people say though i hear everything.. the ENT Specialist said my nerves are weak.. i want to ask if hearing aid can resolve my problem? what is the solution of my problem? please do answer i will be thankfull to you..
August 8th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
How can I learn to “speech read”?