Audiobooks are becoming increasingly popular as a means to read your favorite books on the go; it’s easy and convenient to listen while driving or doing chores around the house. Audiobooks enable you to enjoy literature whenever and wherever, without needing to sit down and read. What’s more, they can also be very useful as forms of auditory training.
What Does “Auditory Training” Mean?
Your brain’s function in hearing is to receive and interpret audio information transmitted from the ear. This happens in the auditory processing center of the brain. Auditory training is like a workout for the auditory processing center, practicing and strengthening the ability to perceive and understand audio information, especially speech comprehension.
How Can Audiobooks Be Used for Auditory Training?
Audiobooks make excellent auditory training tools because they help the brain practice auditory processing in a number of ways:
- Speech perception. When listening to audiobooks, you focus entirely on the words being spoken, which trains your brain to recognize speech patterns, words, and sounds. Additionally, voice actors who narrate audiobooks for a living often have excellent enunciation, making it easier. If you miss anything, you can rewind.
- Enhanced focus. Audiobooks can be long, so you can practice staying engaged in a conversation for prolonged periods of time. Moreover, you don’t have other things competing for your focus, such as background noise or trying to formulate responses.
- Vocabulary and pronunciation. Matching sounds you capture to words in your known vocabulary is an often-overlooked part of auditory processing. Exposing your brain to new words expands your vocabulary and bolsters this part of auditory processing.
- Listening comprehension. When you have a plot to follow, understanding speech means more than just knowing the words being spoken. Following a plot in a story is excellent practice for following a conversation.
Can Audiobooks Help with Adapting to Hearing Aids?
Yes, they can! An adjustment period is common when you’ve recently started wearing hearing aids or upgraded to a new pair, as your auditory processing center needs to adapt to a sudden increase in sound information. Listening to audiobooks during that adaptation period can help with it considerably. Audiobooks can assist with reacquainting yourself with your ability to hear and practice speech comprehension.
To make it even easier, many modern hearing aids come with Bluetooth® technology, which means you can stream audiobooks directly to your hearing aids from your phone or audiobook player.
Tips for Making Audiobooks Work for You
- Read and listen at the same time. Reading a physical copy of the book and listening to the audiobook will help in the early stages. Think of it like turning subtitles on while watching a movie.
- Look for male voice actors. Lower pitches are easier to hear, especially if you have hearing loss.
- Decrease the speed. You can change the playback speed, so start slow to give yourself time to catch up.
- Take notes as you read. Writing notes has been proven to reinforce comprehension and memory capabilities. Your audiobook notes don’t have to be super in-depth; just jot down a sentence or two at the end of every listening session about what happened. This will reinforce your comprehension.
Follow these tips when you’re starting out, and as your listening skills improve, you can expand: listen without the physical book, seek out female voice actors and increase the playback speed to normal.
If you want to find out more about auditory training and specifically how audiobooks can help with that, contact Elevate Audiology to discuss more. Our team is knowledgeable and happy to converse with you about these benefits.