{"id":823,"date":"2026-07-07T11:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T10:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology-new\/?page_id=823"},"modified":"2026-07-07T11:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T10:25:03","slug":"understanding-speech-in-noisy-environments","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/hearing-loss\/understanding-speech-in-noisy-environments\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding speech in noisy environments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hearing is not always about what sound our ears can detect. What tends to be the bigger issue is our ability to understand speech, especially in background noise. This is often called auditory processing and is something that hearing aids cannot easily help with. Understanding speech in a noisy environment relies on quick neural pathways in our brain. We know these pathways slowly deteriorate with age, making it harder to separate out speech from the background noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-accent-grey-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As our quick neural pathways slow down we may:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Start to have more difficulty understanding speech in noise, or when more than one person is speaking.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Frequently say &#8220;what&#8221; &#8220;eh&#8221; when you haven&#8217;t heard clearly.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Misunderstand what is being said.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Need a longer response time during conversation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-left is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-b192c3d7 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-100\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/hearing-loss\/\">Back<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hearing is not always about what sound our ears can detect. What tends to be the bigger issue is our ability to understand speech, especially in background noise. This is often called auditory processing and is something that hearing aids cannot easily help with. Understanding speech in a noisy environment relies on quick neural pathways<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":309,"featured_media":0,"parent":798,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-823","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"scottsamson","author_link":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/blog\/author\/scottsamson\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":false,"rttpg_excerpt":"Hearing is not always about what sound our ears can detect. What tends to be the bigger issue is our ability to understand speech, especially in background noise. This is often called auditory processing and is something that hearing aids cannot easily help with. Understanding speech in a noisy environment relies on quick neural pathways","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/309"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions\/1336"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/audiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}