We use our hearing memory all the time – especially for hearing in noise. Hearing memory is tricky. You generally only hear words once. This is different to reading, where you can go back over a passage many times as you like. But hearing is generally once off.

Hearing loss affects many people- about one in three people over 70. We know that cognitive and hearing memory processes contribute to our ability to understand speech, and we know that this gets harder as we get older. The challenge of processing sequential sounds rapidly enough occurs with all listeners but may have more impact on older people who also have hearing impairment. Hearing aids help, but sometimes other strategies are needed too.

In studying this area, I have understood how important the effect of our hearing (or auditory) memory is.

There are exercises that have been developed to help you to increase your short term memory: one of my favourites is reverse digit span, which is one to do with a partner:

One of you says some numbers – maybe three to start with. The other person recites them back to you, in the reverse order. See how long a string you can get. Let me know when you get to a string of eight numbers or more.

Another one, if you live alone, is to listen to a segment on the radio, and then to write down all the facts that you can remember from it. If you have audio books, you can try playing a segment and then replaying it to check how much you got right. The details in a conversation are what keep us engaged and interested.

General knowledge helps too, so keep learning. When you are in background noise, your brain calls on all resources – including auditory memory and knowledge. In fact classically trained musicians generally can hear better than most people in noise, because they have been exercising training in auditory memory and attention for many years. So get learning some tunes too.