Why Do Some Struggle to Hear in Noise?
November 18, 2025
-
3 min
7 Key Takeaways
-
1
Study focused on speech perception in noisy environments.
-
2
Participants included individuals with autism and FASD.
-
3
Lower IQ scores correlated with poorer speech perception ability.
-
4
Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence used for cognitive assessment.
-
5
Participants required favorable conditions for accurate speech identification.
-
6
Study showed limitations due to small sample sizes.
-
7
No competing interests reported by researchers.
A recent study published in PLOS One reveals that individuals with lower intellectual abilities struggle to identify a single speaker in noisy environments, even with normal hearing. The researchers found a significant negative relationship between cognitive scores and the ability to isolate a target talker amid competing voices. This trend was evident across participants with autism and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, highlighting general intellectual ability as a key factor influencing auditory perception in challenging acoustic settings. The study involved 49 participants, all screened for typical hearing, and utilized a tailored multitalker speech perception task to analyze performance.
Listen Tab content
