Time to read: 6 minutes
Did you know that we all use little cheats when we have a conversation?
That’s because our ears only do part of the job when it comes to listening.
While we’re in a discussion, our eyes are hard at work too. We subconsciously analyse the speaker’s body language to better understand the motives and emotion behind the chat as well as reading lips to make sure we hear ‘meet’, instead of ‘feet’.
In fact many children, particularly those of the autism spectrum, are being taught to listen with their whole body:
To make listening more concrete and teachable, speech pathologist Susanne Poulette Truesdale (1990) came up with a powerful, and now very popular, concept known as “whole body listening.” This innovative tool breaks down the abstract concept of listening by explaining how each body part other than the ears is involved: the brain thinking about what is being said; the eyes looking at or toward the speaker; the mouth quiet; the body facing toward the speaker; and the hands and feet quiet and kept to oneself. In a more recent article (2013) Truesdale stresses that the most critical part of whole body listening takes place in the brain. She states that “when we are asking someone to think about what we are saying, we are in essence asking for the listener’s brain to be connected and tuned-in.”
It’s a great set of skills for adults to remember as well.
One of the challenges of recognising age-related hearing loss is that we become so good at using many of these ‘whole body’ cues that it can become a bit of a shock to discover how much our ears are missing.
More reading:
Sometimes it takes an embarrassing moment in a conversation, or repeated calls to turn down the television volume before we recognise that we’ve been using these adaptive cues.
More recently, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has added another factor - face masks.
Although not as widely used in Australia as they are in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, face masks have revealed to many people how much they use lipreading to understand being spoken to. An audiologist in Ireland has seen an increase in hearing test enquiries as a result of so many people wearing face masks.
Given the ongoing pandemic, face masks are here to stay, as they become increasingly used as a preventative measure during the regular cold and flu season.
While there are clear-panel masks and face-shields as alternatives to the nose and mouth covering, they too can muffle sound and aren’t widely used.
If you’ve found conversations with people who wear masks difficult, then know that you are not alone. The good news is that finding out early that you have hearing loss, even very mild loss, means there are more options available to help you maximise your very best hearing.
More reading:
We also have some great tips in this article on how to improve communication with people with hearing loss.
