Hearing and Acoustical Handicaps

T HE PROBLEMS attending the failure to hear normally can hardly be understood without some grasp of what normal hearing is like. This understanding must go beyond the physical characteristics of sound and beyond the organic reception of auditory stimuli. It must include an awareness of the psychological and social effects of audition. Apparently it is difficult to establish the concept that hearing may differ not only in degree but also in kind. Every clinician concerned with hearing is familiar with reports that a patient can hear "real well" and yet fails to understand much of what is said to him. Most of us know of persons who literally can hear a pin drop but still have difficulty in oral communication. Such instances, along with observation and study of persons with severe loss of hearing, point to the important fact that deafness brings about a qualitative as well as a quantitative change in the total pattern of sensory perception (1).