It's Not The Kids!!

Have you ever experienced difficulty understanding your teenager, or young grandchild's conversations? Chances are you've asked them to speak clearer and maybe a bit slower. Based upon recent research in the psychology of hearing, it is believed that middle aged adults (40-55) do not process rapid timing cues , such as temporal order, vowel/consonant duration and gaps between words/letters as efficiently as younger adults and teenagers over age 13. These short lived temporal bits of information often suffer distortion in the daily cacophony of speech mixed with noise. What can we do to lessen the mid-life 'slowdown'? The first thing is to maximize the speech to background noise ratio. Explain to the child that it is proper communication etiquette to carry on conversation in the same room while facing an adult at a distance of 3-4 feet. The naturally higher level of speech at this distance should be able to overcome troublesome background noise in many instances. Secondly, if the water in the sink is running or the microwave oven is busy cycling, wait until all is quiet before initiating conversation. Believe it or not , older teenagers (> 13 years) and young adults can usually pick out speech under more adversity than those of us over 40. They are not consciously trying to lay a 'communication land-mine' when speaking indirectly and/or rapidly while running through the kitchen which happens to be filled with multiple noise sources. They just have young ears with exquisite hearing !! If your problem of understanding speech remains in spite of proper distance & background noise control , see an audiologist trained in such matters. Most people can benefit from a combination of positioning strategies and/or a properly fitted hearing aid.



Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol.119, #4, April 2006, pp 2305-2325 , 2455-2466
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 122,#1, July 2007, 458-466
Journal of American Academy of Audiology; vol. 19, #2, February 2008, pp 135-146