There are two main ways people discuss selective hearing. The first relates to someone who chooses to hear only what they want. For example, someone who hears “Your meals look delicious, but I wish you’d clean the kitchen after cooking” might only choose to remember, even if subconsciously, “Your meals look delicious.”
While the first definition is the way most people think about the phrase selective hearing, there is another definition: the ability to focus on a single sound source in an environment of competing sounds. For example, if you’re at a busy happy hour at Damon & Company, selective hearing allows you to tune out all the background chatter and focus on the person talking. This ability is also called the cocktail party effect.
Let’s take a look at how hearing loss affects selective hearing and what you can do to improve the skill.
How Does Hearing Loss Affect Selective Hearing
One 2008 study found that people without hearing loss can easily focus on specific sounds in noisy environments. They could zero in on a particular sound source even with background chatter.
However, this process was much harder for participants with hearing loss. When background noise competes with speech, the brain has to work much harder to keep up. This extra work may cause trouble understanding, excess fatigue or even a tendency to skip social gatherings altogether.
How Can I Improve My Selective Hearing?
There are a couple of tools you can use to improve selective hearing:
- Wear hearing aids. Hearing aids are remarkable devices that collect and amplify speech. Many modern devices have advanced AI that analyzes your environment and identifies the most important sounds to amplify, ideally those of the sound you’re trying to focus on.
- Consider auditory training. While it may not feel like it, listening to and understanding speech is a skill. Hearing loss can slowly degrade this skill, making it difficult to understand others even with hearing aids. Auditory training helps re-sharpen your listening skills to improve speech comprehension. One effective auditory training method is listening to audiobooks and following along with the written text. This activity will help your brain process the speech and improve understanding, all while enjoying our favorite stories.
To learn more about managing your hearing loss, contact Hampton Roads ENT ~ Allergy today for an appointment with one of our specialists.