I started reading "The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind" by Horowitz at just about the same time as the local campus School of Communicative Disorders offered a four meeting class once a week on "aural rehabilitation." I attended two of the sessions and the thing that got my attention was electronic enhancement and assistance for my hearing.
I don't notice any special limitations on myself when it comes to hearing other than understanding speech. It isn't a matter of background noise, the subject that usually comes up. It is a matter of speech speed, volume and distinctive pronunciation. It may be related to "semantic nets", brain associations of sets of words, where I can recognize "ankle" better and more confidently if I have just heard "knee" or "turning" or "sprained". I just talked to a retired professor of audiology who knows about my hearing and he said he is confident that the my loss of high pitched hearing often deprives me of the consonants in others' speech. I think he is right. I am reminded of what I have heard of the original of the word "barbarian". The Greeks heard strange languages and they tended to sound like "bar bar bar". For me, it is more like "ar ar ar".
The Horowitz book discusses the vital need bats have for good hearing since they locate their food by sound and echo. It discusses the Mars probes and attached microphones to let us hear the soundscape of that part of the red planet. Nobody thinks it odd to have the landers take pictures of the area but collecting the sounds seem more far-fetched.
Prof. Horowitz says that he is working on a book on listening and I am looking forward to it. Through Twitter's suggestions, I learned about the World Listening Project. I just listened to a street in Shanghai at 6 AM local time.
Bill
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