Can people who are hard of hearing be disturbed by overhead noises?

Question

My 83 yeard old mother who is hard of hearing (she sometimes has trouble hearing on the telephone and during some normal conversations) is constantly complaining about the neighbor in the apartment just above her making loud noises, stomping, dragging and dropping things. Is it possible that she is imagining this or can a person with hearing loss still be bothered by such disturbances? I'd like to know before I complain to her apartment management.

Answer 1

It is possible that she is feeling very loud noises.

It is also possible that hearing these sounds through a floor lowers their pitch to a range that she is able to hear. They may not be loud enough for somone with "normal" hearing to complain about ... but if the rest of her world is hard to hear and she hears these sounds well they may seem very loud to her.

Stick around some day and ask her to point out when the neighbor is being loud.

There is nothing worse than being in a fight with someone that lives right next to you. Make sure you get the facts before complaining.

Answer 2

Often times as we get older we develop a high frequency hearing loss which makes it difficult to understand conversations because we start to miss the higher frequency consonant sounds of our speech. The lower frequencies may be heard better and those are vowel sounds. That is why people say, I can hear, but I don't understand.

The noises that she may hear from up above her apartment are most likely low frequency sounds and she may hear those normally. It is quite likely that she is hearing some input normally and other input abnormally depending on the degree and configuration of your hearing loss.

I would recommend you get her evaluated by an audiologist - and - talk to the apartment management to see what can be done to minimize the sounds from overhead.

Answer 3

Absolutely. People who are hard of hearing often develop their other senses better. She can probably feel the vibrations.