Nearly 36 million people in the US alone have hearing loss. Most of these people would agree that shouting doesn’t help the conversation, it only increases the frustration.  Why?

Most hearing losses are greatest in the higher frequencies where consonants lie, and less so in the lower vowels tones. When one yells, they increase glottal tones such as low frequency vowels which typically do no good for most hearing impaired people.  To illustrate this, you can probably yell an “O” or “A” sound across a city block, but it’s really difficult to yell a “T” sound.

While consonants are higher pitch than vowels, they also convey more word information in a conversation.  The consonants provide essential pauses in speech, separating syllables and words from one another.  When they are missing, words can be perceived as running together and speech perceived as mumbling.

In this sense, consonants are more important to speech understanding than vowels. It is possible to figure out a word if you remove the vowels, but removing consonants will leave a listener saying, “I hear words, I just can’t understand them.”

The best way to help someone with hearing loss, besides having their hearing checked, is to take a deep breath; don’t react emotionally, but speak more clearly, distinctly, and at a moderate pace – sort of  like a newscaster.

Some content provided by: http://www.lindaahartford.com