The 4 Stages of Guessing

We’ve all experienced guessing during a conversation. You’re in a crowded room and it’s loud, your attention was on something else for a moment, the person talking turned their head, etc. and a piece of information was missed, so you guess. However, when you add hearing loss to the equation, guessing becomes more of a common occurrence. Guessing happens in stages and these can be a slow progression. When we start guessing more than 50% of the time is when it becomes a problem. So, let’s look a the stages of guessing.

Stage 1: Guessing Correctly

At this stage, you might be guessing a few words here and there and getting them right. Soft sounds like ‘z,’ ‘v,’ and ‘p’ may be becoming harder to hear. This one I think almost everyone has experienced. Some sounds when heard sound very similar, but we can usually glean enough from the context of the conversation to guess the word correctly. With a mild hearing loss, some sounds may be harder to hear, but you can typically follow the conversation with very little problem.

Stage 2: Guessing Incorrectly

Are you guessing at what people are saying most of the time but guessing part of the word correctly or guessing a similar word? At this stage, more sounds are becoming difficult to hear like ‘j,’ ‘m,’ ‘d,’ and ‘b.’

This is because all of the sounds made in the English language fall into a very specific pattern of where we can hear them. We call this the speech banana because, well honestly because it looks like a banana. As you can see, most sounds fall between about 25-55 decibels in volume. When hearing loss falls near or below the volume these sounds are made, it becomes more difficult to hear them, thus more guessing. You may catch part of the work and have to fill in the blank on what sound makes the most sense.

Stage 3: Guessing Wrong

Now you might be guessing more words and guessing wrong. Are you asking others to repeat themselves frequently? Are sounds like ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ getting harder to hear? These are tell-tale signs of hearing loss. This can be confirmed with a hearing test and understanding your audiogram. As mentioned above, the more severe the hearing loss, or the more volume you need to hear clearly, the more likely it is that you’ll need to guess.

Stage 4: Not Guessing Anymore

At this point, you’ve guessed and gotten wrong too many times. Now you may not be participating in the conversation or social functions at all. Maybe because you can’t understand what people are saying or you don’t feel confident in what you hear. This is the stage we want to avoid. Not only does it cause isolation, but from research, we know undiagnosed hearing loss is correlated with higher instances of cognitive deficits like Dementia.

Let’s Reduce the Guessing

Before you or someone you love gets to stage 4, ask a hearing professional about what aids or strategies could help. This could be hearing aids, changes to communication styles if they already have aids, changes to program settings, etc. Our goal is to have you hear the conversation clearly and comfortably, with minimal guessing needed.

For more information on how we can reduce the guessing, call us at 705-749-0707.

*Post adapted from an original post by Hear Right Canada.