We don’t really hear in our ears; we hear in our brain. Hearing aids can help a person detect softer sounds, but they don’t necessarily provide good listening skills. There is a fundamental difference between hearing and listening. Normal hearing alone does not assure that one is a good listener.

Fortunately, there are auditory training therapy programs designed to help the brain listen. Listening and Communication Enhancement (LACE) is one we have found which is both highly effective and user friendly. It is a 20-30 minute program each day for 20 days and is done using a computer or TV with a DVD player and in the comfort of your own home. LACE is designed to enhance listening and communication skills, get the patient involved in the therapeutic process, improve confidence levels, and provide communication strategies.

The program consists of a variety of interactive and adaptive training tasks for listening to speech in noise, rapid speech, and auditory memory. Besides the immediate feedback given for each task, LACE provides the patient with a graph depicting daily improvement and progress. Research on thousands of people with hearing loss demonstrates that you can expect on average a 40% improvement of speech comprehension in noisy situations.

It should be reinforced at this point that better hearing is not a passive process where you simply let hearing aids do all the work (in other words success does not rest solely on the hearing aids and the fitting expertise of the hearing healthcare professional). To optimize your hearing aid experience you must become an active participant.

Content provided by Better Hearing Institute