"Look at me so I can hear you!"

So said my friend's mom one day. Although this remark caused my friend and her siblings to chuckle, her mother was absolutely right. She had a hearing loss and she truly needed to watch her daughter's lip movements in order to recognize the words that she could only partially hear.

In one of our studies at Washington University in St. Louis, we found that a group of older adults with hearing loss recognized only about 30% of the words in a word test.  However, when we let them see the talker, so they could also lipread as well as listen, performance jumped to 80% correct!  The take home messages are these:

• If you have hearing loss, you'll understand much more of what talkers say if you can see their faces. Position yourself wisely and ask people to face you during conversation.
• If you are talking to someone who has hearing loss, be sure to face them head-on so they can watch your mouth movements.

 Ear train the brain