Interesting. I suspect I may have the same thing.

I also have poor vision without glasses, and I’ve always found that when I go swimming (and can’t wear my glasses) my hearing also gets significantly worse. Or at least the cocktail party problem gets worse, as my brain seems to get overwhelmed by every single background noise. I think some of this is explained by many indoor pools being big echoey spaces, but it still happens at outdoor pools as well. I suspect that when one sense (sight) is degraded, my brain tries to compensate by focusing on another sense (hearing), and the end result is even worse due to APD.

Ditto here. An audiologist recommended something called LACE therapy, but it wasn't cheap so at the time I didn't go for it - I need to look into it, and see if it's a legitimate treatment for this, or snake-oil.

I would not say it's snake oil, but it will only help if you've learned some helplessness or are bad at thinking about what someone is saying while they are speaking. A hearing aid or filter is always going to be more helpful if you only can pick one treatment.

But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise around me, I cannot process what people are saying.

I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned some helplessness." I'm not a complete idiot, I can generally guess what someone is saying based on context, but if I'm having a conversation with Group A in a loud environment, and someone from group B turns to me and says something, I don't have much context as to what they're saying.

(Also, a PSA: if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three words you said. Please repeat the entire sentence. I know that usually, the last few words provide enough context to reconstruct the sentence, but if you just tell me "this Sunday?" it's usually not enough, you have to just say, "Are you still planning on reconfiguring the encambulator this Sunday?")

> if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three words you said.

My pet peeve about asking people to repeat isn't that they won't repeat enough, but that they'll repeat in exact the same volume and enunciation as they originally spoke. I'm not sure why they expect to do the same thing again and get different results. The only thing that I've found that works is to tell them what it sounds like they said, no matter how crazy ("Did you say, 'the elephant is painting the room'?") and only then will they speak loud and clear. (Which I'm sure is annoying for the other person, but what else am I to do?)

Two real examples I knew: someone who started interrupting people mid-sentence to get clarification, and someone whose mind started going blank when other people were talking.

Behavioral training like LACE can be helpful for people who started doing things like that to cope with a hearing problem, but an audiologist should be looking at a filter (with APD you can be prescribed a filter for one ear even if you have no hearing loss, depending on your diagnosis.)

Neither case had anything to do with intelligence as demonstrated in every area of their life outside of hearing processing.

I and these others have auditory processing disorder as well.

The parent poster’s word choice was perhaps uncharitable, but my read is helplessness is not equitable to idiocy. To me, it’s more the difference between actively trying to understand the conversation vs letting it tune out as a default.

I find that I have trouble focusing on one conversation if others are happening around me, but that has much to do with where my focus lies as my brain being overwhelmed.

It didn't occur to me that it was an insulting term. Sorry about that.

This is why I turn on closed captioning even when I'm watching alone with headphones on.