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Hearing problems: the pitch of sound

Of course some people are more difficult to understand than others because they slur their words, mumble or speak softly. In general, though, many deaf people often find male voices easier to understand than female ones and those of young children. This is because male voices tend to be at a lower pitch. Pitch is a measure of how high or low a sound is and is often referred to as its 'frequency'. Ability to hear higher frequencies commonly gets lost with age, although of course it can be lost for other reasons.

As with so many hearing-related problems, deafness is seldom all or nothing. It is by no means unusual to hear much of the what is going on but to miss operative words because a speaker changes pitch or volume for emphasis or speaks with a lilt. 

Digital hearing aids are excellent for tailoring to the pitch-related deafness of an individual because they can be adjusted to amplify different pitches by different amounts. For those deaf people like me, though, who can't cope with hearing aids, it is particularly significant that the brain is very clever indeed at filling in missing sounds to make some sort of sense. However the brain does need to be given a fair chance. Read on to find out how to help.

There are points worth making concerning the volume of sound, though. When a deaf person is asked if they 'can hear', they probably say that they can, because they are aware that speech is going on. However they often lose the thread of what is being said. The reasons can be that people tend not to speak consistently at the same volume. They tend to drop their voices towards the ends of sentences or for the operative words that gives the meaning. Or deaf people can 'hear' the speech as a jumble of incoherent words, as if it were a foreign language. because people drop their voices at the beginnings and ends of words (the consonants). Then all that is 'heard' are the middles of the words (the vowels). Where volume level is the only problem, digital hearing aids can work wonders

How to help

1. Try to find out what it is in a spoken sentence that the deaf person can't pick up - often the beginnings and ends of words or most or the speech of someone with a particular speaking voice.

2. Make sure that the deaf person knows the topic of the discussion and don't change the topic without making sure that that he or she knows about it.

3. Separate words. For some reason, this automatically seems to give more stress to the troublesome beginnings and ends of the words. Speaking slowly isn't the same.

4. If you have a regional accent that the deaf person may be unfamiliar with, let them get used to it before you say anything significant.

5. Don't start a conversation with a question. Let the deaf person get used to the sound of your voice first by making comments on, for example, the weather.