Living with hearing loss can be frustrating. It often feels like sounds become muddled or indistinguishable, making conversations difficult to follow. While hearing aids amplify sounds, they don’t always solve the problem of processing and understanding speech. This is where auditory training can help.
Auditory training is a series of exercises designed to retrain your brain to recognize and process sounds better. Whether you have hearing loss or an auditory processing disorder, these exercises can work with your hearing aids to improve communication by helping your brain interpret the sounds it receives more effectively. Let’s explore how auditory training works and how it can affect your daily life.
How Does Auditory Training Work?
Hearing aids amplify sounds so your ears can bring them to your brain. Once your brain receives sound information, it needs to process it. For those who have lived with untreated hearing loss for a long time, processing the sound can feel like a long-lost skill. Auditory training is a structured program that helps recover these processing skills. It typically involves four areas of focus:
- Sound differentiation. People with high-frequency hearing loss often struggle to understand consonants because they fall within a higher frequency range. This loss can make it hard to tell the difference between similar sounds, like “cat” and “bat” or “seven” and “seventy.” Auditory training helps you recognize these subtle differences, improving your ability to understand speech clearly.
- Sound localization. If you have trouble identifying where a sound is coming from, sound localization exercises can help. These activities teach your brain to recognize the direction of sounds. For example, if someone yells “FORE” at the Bidermann Golf Course, you want to know where the ball is coming from. This is where sound localization exercises can improve communication and help save you from a conk on the head.
- Auditory memory. Auditory memory exercises are designed to help you retain and recall the information you hear. This can make it easier to follow conversations without losing track of key details.
- Hearing in noisy environments. One of the most challenging aspects of hearing loss is understanding speech in noisy settings, like a crowded restaurant or a family gathering. Auditory training helps you improve your focus in these environments, allowing you to understand conversations amidst background noise.
How Auditory Training Can Improve Your Life
Hearing aids bring speech to your ears. Auditory training helps you understand it when it arrives. By strengthening your auditory processing skills, auditory training can work with your hearing aids to bring communication understanding to your life. To learn more about how communication strategies and hearing treatment can help you, contact Wilmington Audiology Services today for an appointment with one of our specialists.