If you are an adult and you have trouble hearing, what ever does “passing” a hearing test mean? I’ll tell you. It means you have passed or failed a screening test which compares you hearing with that of a large number of healthy young people.
A screening pure tone hearing test might only take 5 minutes. A full hearing evaluation can take more like an hour, if you really want to find out why you are having difficulties. I do think this is worth doing, by the way. But pick your assessment centre well. We charge consulting fees and we do a good job. Otherwise, I like word tests best. Questionnaires and word tests.
If you have difficulty hearing, then you have difficulty hearing. Ah, you want to know how well you compare with other people. That’s different. This is typically done using a test called audiometry. If the test is accurately carried out you will be given a graph, which shows you how well you can hear (in decibels of loss) compared with other people. It’s a measure in decibels, and of course you would be aware of what that scale is. You will know that it is the relationship of the measured sound pressure, compared with a reference sound pressure, expressed as a logarithm, and multiplied by 20 (i.e. 20 log10(P-Pref)/P). You will also know that the relationship with loudness is a bit different and that our ears are more sensitive to some pitches than others. You will also understand that this measurement has a somewhat limited relationship with hearing and understanding speech, which relies on the ability to interpret the sounds and understand them, which, in turn, depends on all sorts of other things, that haven’t been measured.
I’m not against the audiogram. Its a good starting point for finding out how much hearing loss you have, and is the usual starting point in trying to find out why you have hearing loss. But I am cautioning against a pass fail approach to a fifteen minute screening test, and of doing nothing more if you find you pass. Don’t wait to fail. The pass fail criteria is often set at 20 dB. 25 dB loss has recently been shown to cause about 7 years cognitive decline. 20 dB may mean that your hearing has deteriorated significantly. It depends how good it used to be.
Or you could just say, “I have trouble hearing, I should really be sensible and do something about it.”
Untreated hearing loss causes our ability to code and understand speech to get worse. I meet people almost everyday who have left it so long that its really hard. Why aren’t we preventing this?
Act now, and hear better, longer.
