Attention is an important part of hearing in noise and speech communication. Theories of speech understanding involve what is described as “Top Down” and “Bottom Up” speech processing. It is generally understood that various types of attentional processes are involved in understanding speech. Authors Pichora-Fuller and Singh in 2006 described these as vigilant, divided and selective attention processes. These are crucial functions in noisy environments. Linguistic factors interact with the attention processes.
What does this mean in plain words then? If one or more of the attention abilities are weak, it is harder to hear in background noise. So supposing that someone has struggles hearing in background noise, and a normal audiogram. Well, they have trouble hearing in background noise. If your hearing test comes up within the normal range and you have trouble in noise, don’t give up the hunt for a solution. I am not convinced that having a test result to say “Why” helps very much, anyway. The answer is probably excellent amplification and automatic directionality, so that signal to noise ratio of speech is improved, and some practical tips. Don’t be afraid to ask people to speak more slowly.
There’s another benefit of good amplification too. If you have automatically triggered directional microphones and use them properly, it is important to turn the beams to the speaker of interest. In other words, you turn your head to the speaker. You might as well have your eyes open and focus on their face. Suddenly, you have a big help. You have the special directional receiver beams’ help, and you are focussing on the speakers face.
Blamey Saunders hears have adaptive directional microphones in our hearing aids, that we are proud of. Additionally, clinical trials have shown that thanks to ADRO, listeners gain some additional benefit discriminating speech sounds in background noise, compared with compression technology. So with both functions acting and some good listening strategies, you are suddenly on a better path.
