Do you have auditory problems? I can't hear what people say

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I, too, can't make heads or tails of conversation with any kind of background noise, and asking people to meet in a very quiet environment is inevitably taken the wrong way.

I don't enjoy music with singing in it for the same reason, I cannot make out the words through the music until I have heard the song many many times and even then I strain to try and figure it out.

But like others, I have exceptionally good hearing (and eyesight, for that matter) in raw terms, just can't always distinguish what the sounds mean.

I speak very very fast but process spoken words quite slowly.

I have very good hearing too. I can hear a watch ticking in the opposite room.

But if two different groups of people are talking to each other, I can only really focus on one conversation. If I try to listen to both I tend to miss the main points of the dialogues.

Hi all, I'm new here. {waving}

I just had to join this forum and say thank you, THANK you for posting this! It's so validating! I've been told I have Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and I've had this problem for as long as I can remember. There is a often a delay before the words make sense. I find myself having to lip-read, especially when there is any type of background noise. A lot of times, speech still sounds like "mumblemumble," even when the person is directly in front of me. Many times, people think I didn't comprehend their words and they start explaining, even when I specifically say I didn't hear them properly. Sometimes background noise happens such that the same few words get drowned out repeatedly, resulting in my asking them to repeat 5 or 6+ times or spell the word(s) I can't make out.. Some people get VERY angry with this and accuse me of not caring enough to pay attention. I do have ADD, but that's not the problem here, and if I didn't care I wouldn't bother to embarrass myself and risk eliciting their abuse by asking for the 6th time what they just said! *sigh*

To garner a little patience and understanding from people, I've taken to claiming that my hearing's not so great... but nothing could be further from the truth. My hearing has always tested normal. I was recently referred for a hearing test due to some allergy-related congestion in one eustachian tube, just to ensure there wasn't something more serious going on. The clinician was truly astounded at how good my hearing is, even on the clogged side. I'm middle aged, but I can still hear like a kid in all ranges, including those high frequencies people my age aren't supposed to be able to hear anymore.

All of this gets me wondering... perhaps part of the problem is that our hearing is *too* good, walloping our brains with a massive heap of overlapping frequencies that is difficult to sort out. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Auditory Processing Disorders: An Overview. ERIC Digest.
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education Arlington VA. ... academic and social situations may have central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), ... The behaviors of children with APD and ADHD may be very similar, ...
http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-5/auditory.htm - Cached - (Google)

I say "what" all the time.
In school, if didnt want to pay attention I could zoom out and heard only a greyscale of noise.
Like this I choose to hear every sound around me or the voice of somebody, just sometimes it is a problem for me, for example when Im tired and in a loud and stressful place. Im not always prepared for people to speak, because it takes me one millisecond to disappear into my own world even if I just met somebody, and I think this is the main reason.

I feel the same way. I think I have Central Auditory Processing Disorder, like my daughter has. It means you hear fine, but can't process the words until later.

I don't have the proper name of the surgery, but what you described is "putting tubes in the ears." The reason for this surgery is to let excessive fluid drain out of the ears. The fluid keeps you from hearing properly.

I have processing problems in general. It's hard for me to get idea-meaning out of things, including words (which by definition are generally about idea-meaning).

I have this a lot. Some people speak very unclearly, and also very fast, and I can't always catch what they're saying. It's not necessarily an Aspie thing - I always hear NTs saying, ''what?'', ''eh?'', ''pardon?'' and whatever else. But sometimes I don't like to keep asking them to repeat because some people snap at me, and I get very sensitive at times, so this sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable.

I like the type of people who speak really loudly. I can hear them better, and the louder they speak the more comfortable I feel.

Myringotomy and grommet insertion.

LINK

+1 for not processing speech quickly enough, so I end up turning up the radio volume sometimes but it's just i'm having a tougher day for sorting verbal information out. However I am also very noise sensitive. esp high frequencies that others don't seem to hear. It's not great when you're driven nuts by a sound that everyone else is oblivious to, as obviously this means it doesn't exist and you're just making a fuss for no reason !

sometimes conversations sound "garbled" to me, at a distance or in noisy enviroments,

I have problems hearing what people are saying sometimes. I hear some people better than others. I think it has something to do with the individual person's voice. For example, there was a girl that I worked with my senior year of college that I could almost never understand, unless she was standing right next to me. She didn't speak with an accent or anything, and she actually enunciated quite clearly, but for some reason her words all jumbled together in my head. When I am watching television, I have a VERY difficult time understanding what the characters are saying, and I often have to turn the TV up, which is a problem when the background noise on the show becomes loud all of a sudden. I used to think that I was starting to lose my hearing due to the several hours that I spend per day listening through headphones. But I can detect a normal range of frequencies (at least, according to an online test) and I also get distracted very easily by small noises that others often don't notice (I need to wear earplugs and have white noise while I sleep in order to avoid distraction). So maybe what I actually have is a processing disorder.

I can have the problem of not always being able to make out what people are saying. I often say 'what' a lot and tend to watch their mouth when they repeat themselves lol. At other times I hear them just fine lol.

Sometimes I can be away from the moment because my brain has wondered off back into it's own little world lol. Other times I am present but just cannot not make out what they have said. I hear the words but my brain doesn't make any sense of them the first time around.

However, there is nothing wrong with my hearing and in some ways I can be too sensitive to sound...I cannot tolerate the sound of a crowded room where everyone is talking at once, for example. The background noise becomes intolerable after a while!

As a poster above does, I also need to keep the tv up loud to be able to hear it, which again can be a problem when the background noise suddenly comes up much louder than the volume of the speech is lol.

This explains alot about those ridiculous hearing tests my dad would subject me to in the years before I was diagnosed with AS.

He still thinks I have bad hearing though.

I can hear just fine but sometimes I have to rewind or put close captioning on videos to figure out what they're saying. When I was in theater class in high school there was a boy with muscular atrophy. Despite his unclear speech everybody in the class was able to understand him just fine except for me and it made me feel like a terrible person for not understanding a thing he said. Now I think it was more a matter extra processing that my mind couldn't handle of having to understand both the words coming out of his mouth and the instructions he was trying to give me. Theater communication is like a foreign language.

I have auditory processing problems when the environment is very loud. I can't understand anything when there is any sort of background noise. Very difficult and my annoying brother calls me deaf but in reality I am hypersensitive to noise. I can hear insignificant sounds but when someone is giving me multi step instructions for something (like I have an art teacher) then I can't process it at all. I am not an auditory learner, but rather by visual and actually being shown the step of how to do something. My ability to comprehend things is limited. I also misinterpret people talking to me and the meanings of things. I can hear it fine though, only when there is background noise I have problems actually hearing. Today when I went to the doctor to check in I couldn't hear because of the noise and had to read lips (which I don't know how to do).

Some people talk to quick and/or too quietly. I like the type of people who speak loud and clearly.