One similarity between hearing aids and eyeglasses is that they work in a similar way. Eyeglasses cannot return your eyesight to normal. The same goes for hearing aids. Unless you are totally deaf, a hearing aid can:
1) Give sounds a louder and more significant quality
2) Transform sound into vibrations so that they can be recognized by your brain cells.
You might be able to hear better with your hearing aid, but you are still not hearing as well as someone with 20/20 eyesight. Although new innovations are constantly being introduced to make people’s lives easier, there are some external factors that affect its performance even if you might have a hearing aid prescribed by your audiologist. Here lists them as below:
Hearing aids can only restore some hearing, but they cannot make us hear as well as other people can. This is what makes these devices different from eyeglasses, which may be very thick so that people can still see and read normally.
This is known as speech discrimination, which is an approximation of how well you understand words; it’s measured on a scale from 0-100% (0% understanding equals constructive interference). For example, if you’ve scored 50%, then you understand half of what you hear – the rest is gibberish.
You must wear them constantly to adjust to them and reap benefits of your devices. It can take weeks before you adjust, so wear it regularly for an optimal experience.
If you must read lips in order to understand what people are saying to you, wearing hearing aids will make it much easier. Those with hearing aids should also speak clearly and laugh out loud if necessary. People speaking to them should interact face-to-face and not mumble their words.
Noise is a common problem for those with hearing loss. In a noisy environment, you may need to increase volume to the point where the voices are jarring and hard to understand. That is because you can’t decipher what someone is saying from reading their lips alone.
Rooms with excellent acoustics will improve your ability to hear out conversations while various other rooms may muffle what you’re trying to hear.
The performance of your hearing aid is not the only thing that can affect how well it works for you. Hence, it is important to note these factors before using your hearing aid to improve your hearing in conversation.
Source:
HK Hearing & Speech Centre
Specialist of Hearing test & assessment,
http://www.hkhearingspeech.com