Why can't I understand speech in background noise?

Audiologists frequently hear patients complain that although they can hear, they cannot understand what people are saying. People who have problems understanding speech may have one or more types of hearing problems. Fortunately, there are options for treating these difficulties.

It is often not easy for some people to hear soft speech. Many patients believe that when hearing begins to fail, it is simply a matter of increasing loudness. Unfortunately, improving a person's hearing may not be simply a matter of making soft sounds louder by increasing the volume of an electronic device or a person's voice.

Others have challenges with hearing the parts of speech that carry most of the information, like the consonants ("t," "p," "s," "th," etc.). Unfortunately, consonants are frequently high-pitched sounds, and many people have difficulty hearing them. With a high-pitched hearing problem, it becomes hard to tell the difference between words like "cat" and "cap," or "sit" and "sip."

Hearing in noise is something that is tough for many to do, even if they have little problem hearing speech in quiet conditions. There are two major reasons why people at any age can have difficulty hearing speech in noise:

1. Unwanted low-pitch sounds cover the higher-pitched consonant sounds that contain critical information to understand speech.

2. Most people who have hearing loss have more loss in the higher pitches than the lower ones. Higher-pitched sounds containing the consonants listeners so desperately need to hear are barely heard because of the low-pitched noise.

To increase your understanding of speech in noisy conditions, have an audiologist check your hearing. Audiologists can diagnose hearing loss and make recommendations to maximize your hearing ability. An audiologist may need to fit hearing aids on the patient to help. The following hearing aid features can improve hearing in noise:

• Automatic adaptive directional microphones
• Adaptive noise suppression, which detects and reduces static noise conditions
• Speech enhancement, which automatically detects important speech sounds and provides extra amplification to frequencies on which important sounds exist.
• Self learning volume control, which will remember the last time a volume change was made in specific listening environments.

To learn more about how to improve understanding in noisy environments, contact Audiology and Hearing Services at (517) 323-6222.