New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations • Hacker News Board

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#31

Post by dghughes » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:14 AM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #20

Semaphor wrote: post #16

Wow. Good to know I'm not just going crazy. I score above average on hearing tests, being able to hear higher frequency tones even with 30, but I already have problems hearing someone talking into a direction away from me.

Yep, I've had this problem forever. Close relatives think I'm deaf before I can't understand them when there's a lot of ambient noise or they aren't speaking clearly, even though I can hear everything else just fine (and have always been very protective of my hearing). There's apparently no way I can convince them otherwise. In American culture, if you can't easily understand people speaking in a whisper in an extrem…

Hearing loss can start with the inability to hear consonants in words.

My mother has it but won't get it checked and won't get a hearing aid. The slightest bit of noise to her is like the world is roaring and we are all mumbling.

I also worked with a guy who had almost no hearing in one ear and he was similar where any bit of noise and that was it he was gone no longer able to hear.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787079/

I have experience the other way I worked evening shifts in a casino and I learned to hear through noise through crowds and could understand a person. I could hear someone ten feet away in a roaring crowd most times I could tell they were looking for help but I could hear them too.

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#32

Post by aisofteng » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 4:06 AM UTC

This article tangentially mentions something I've long held, as a privately thought, as essential to the study of and eventual understanding of what defines sentience.

There is a fundamental difference between distinguishing stimuli and _choosing_ to distinguish stimuli. There is clearly a physical basis for fine detection and discrimination of auditory stimuli, whose mechanics lie in the ear, hair cells, auditory cortex, and so on, and these are fundamental to the ability to navigate a _very_ stimulus-ridden world.

However, the ability to _choose_ which stimuli to _pay attention to_ is, I feel, key to understanding sentience. Any system can respond to stimuli - not any system can _choose_ which stimuli to respond to. Understanding that ability of choice - that is, the process of attention - will be, I feel, a key step towards understanding sentience (and, eventually, how our own minds work).

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#33

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:43 AM UTC

zeta0134 wrote: post #2

I can't read this article without paying for a subscription. Forgive my ignorance of procedure with something like this; should the title perhaps include an indication that the article is not free? I didn't see any guidelines concerning paid / subscription articles in the FAQ.

The supposed WSJ paywall workarounds have never worked for me. I find WSJ posts to HN entirely useless.

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#34

Post by animal531 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:24 AM UTC

rconti wrote: post #15

One interesting phenomenon I once noticed was my own ability to combine lip reading and auditory performance. I was at a basketball game, on the 2nd level, and of course could not hear what was happening on the bench due to crowd noise. But when I watched the coach through binoculars, suddenly I could hear what she was saying. I'd never have guessed I had any ability to lip-read whatsoever, but I was blown away by my…

When I was little I would watch the news with the volume turned off, then I'd try to lip read. I found that I could do very well as long as I could guess the context (usually by guessing from the associated picture they'd show next to the person). Yours might be the same effect.

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#35

Post by Grishnakh » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #31

Grishnakh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I've had this problem forever. Close relatives think I'm deaf before I can't understand them when there's a lot of ambient noise or they aren't speaking clearly, even though I can hear everything else just fine (and have always been very protective of my hearing). There's apparently no way I can convince them otherwise. In American culture, if you can't easily understand people speaking in a whisper in an extrem…

Hearing loss can start with the inability to hear consonants in words. My mother has it but won't get it checked and won't get a hearing aid. The slightest bit of noise to her is like the world is roaring and we are all mumbling. I also worked with a guy who had almost no hearing in one ear and he was similar where any bit of noise and that was it he was gone no longer able to hear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/a…

Noise doesn't bother me, I just can't understand spoken speech if there's too much of it. It's always been this way, so I'm getting really sick and tired of all the assholes telling me I'm developing hearing loss. I've always been able to hear CRT monitors at a long distance, which most "normal" people can't. If you can't hear 15.75kHz, as far as I'm concerned, you're the one who's deaf.

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#36

Post by antod » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #20

Semaphor wrote: post #16

Wow. Good to know I'm not just going crazy. I score above average on hearing tests, being able to hear higher frequency tones even with 30, but I already have problems hearing someone talking into a direction away from me.

Yep, I've had this problem forever. Close relatives think I'm deaf before I can't understand them when there's a lot of ambient noise or they aren't speaking clearly, even though I can hear everything else just fine (and have always been very protective of my hearing). There's apparently no way I can convince them otherwise. In American culture, if you can't easily understand people speaking in a whisper in an extrem…

I have this problem too, and it's one of the main reasons I now hate going to bars. If I'm in a group of people having a conversation I end up standing around concentrating hard to grasp a tiny percentage of what's going on (usually too late to chime in) by bad lip reading. Lots of nodding and flubbing and feeling stupid when someone asks me something. Mostly I just hear what could be described as loud crackly distortion - not fun. I can hear just fine without that background noise though. The ambient noise doesn't even have to be that loud either.

Re: New studies of the brain’s ability to decode words in loud situations

#37

Post by dghughes » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 6:01 PM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #35

dghughes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hearing loss can start with the inability to hear consonants in words. My mother has it but won't get it checked and won't get a hearing aid. The slightest bit of noise to her is like the world is roaring and we are all mumbling. I also worked with a guy who had almost no hearing in one ear and he was similar where any bit of noise and that was it he was gone no longer able to hear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/a…

Noise doesn't bother me, I just can't understand spoken speech if there's too much of it. It's always been this way, so I'm getting really sick and tired of all the assholes telling me I'm developing hearing loss. I've always been able to hear CRT monitors at a long distance, which most "normal" people can't. If you can't hear 15.75kHz, as far as I'm concerned, you're the one who's deaf.

That doesn't matter if you can hear the the whine of a CRT you can have hearing loss in a specific frequency.

We all have hearing loss as adults just past our teens we all lose the low 20Hz end and the high 20KHz end of our hearing that's normal.

My mother said as a teenager she listened to her transistor by holding it against her left ear. Now she can't hear high sounds out of her left ear but she can hear mid range and low range sounds perfectly.

I don't think anyone is trying to be an asshole. It's strange how we as a society can't say to a person you may have hearing loss but we can say to a person your eyes are bad maybe you need glasses.