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Auditory training (LACE or similar)

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What is the benefit of repeating out loud?

Correctness of things heard I distinguish really good this way, since I’m focusing on what I hear and not what I think I hear.
But I’d like to hear more about it :slight_smile:

Um I wanted to know why, what’s the difference. If you know of course. Or could point me to some website which explains it?

The difference is that in one case your ears hear you say it and your auditory system is reactivated in a bottom-up fashion and in the other case you just say it in your head and your ears do not hear it again–your auditory system is still activated, but less strongly and in a top-down fashion. It’s just an optimization thing.

Hm interesting. Thanks!
Can you point me where I can find out more about top-down and bottom-up you mention?
Or if you could explain in more details.

Instructions didn’t point out that difference, so I thought it doesn’t matter until you started commenting now, so now I’m curious and want to find out more about it :smiley:

You say optimisation, so repeating out loud would make progress faster, is that what you meant?

@Blacky said:

You say optimisation, so repeating out loud would make progress faster, is that what you meant?

Yeah, theoretically. I certainly don’t have direct citations, and doubt I could find any given the general lack of research that auditory training does much in the first place, let alone a difference between reading aloud and silently in auditory training.

It just seems right. Pathways in the brain are built through activation and repetition (and novelty and salience). Bottom-up refers to a signal coming in from the outside and moving its way ‘up’ to the more complex, multi-modal and cognitive areas of the brain. Top-down is the reverse. We’re doing both all the time, really*, but it makes more sense to me to add in the peripheral activation as well when you are repeating given how little extra effort it entails. Basically, just doing the top-down stuff doesn’t give the whole pathway as much of a work-out.

I might be able to come up with sort of tangential citations. If you just think about completing a certain movement, the areas in your brain that normally light up when you are moving in that way do light up, but not as strongly. There’s a bunch of fMRI stuff on mental imagery or rehearsing versus actual execution of an action, but a lot of the stuff I’m thinking of is behind pay-walls (e.g. 2009 review Munzert, Lorey, Zentgraf). Also, you get a memory benefit for speaking things aloud rather than rehearsing them silently (production effect). Colin MacLeod has a 2018 article suggesting both the motor and auditory compenents are important. The musician benefit literature tends to find benefit only for individuals who have musical training, not individuals who just listen to music–the engagement, production, and matching with your instrument (mouth/ears) is important. I recall a couple of studies where people who just listen to music were used as one of the control groups, but I can’t dig them up at the moment.**

So, just call it educated guessing. :smile:

*Those with hearing loss have to rely more on top-down processing because bottom-up processing is impaired. Here’s a review that ends in the unsatisfying way that an unfortunate majority of papers end, “we need more research”, but it’s open access: Impact of peripheral hearing loss on top-down auditory processing - PMC3

**Nonetheless, here are a couple of articles looking at the benefit of musical training for hearing: https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.49426281, Ear and Hearing2, Ear and Hearing

Whoa, this is more than I hoped for! You’re worth your weight in gold :smiley:

Thank you so much!

Yeah I was digging to find out about auditory training and couldn’t find much, that’s why I asked if you maybe have some secret source :smiley:

Now you have me bunch of terms I didn’t meet before so I have more things for digging, thanks :smiley:

For others reading, I’ll post few examples / explanations I found

Top-down auditory processing is more, shall we say, thoughtful, using tools like context (dinner table, board meeting, classroom), expectations (past experience, person speaking), and nonverbal cues (facial expressions, body language). It considers those factors, along with the speech sounds, and does its best to interpret what was said.

The bottom-up system, on the other hand, makes a lightning-fast, best guess based on the raw sound data. Period. No consideration of context or those other complicating, time-consuming factors.

From here Top Down vs Bottom-Up: The Battle to Understand Speech | Kathi Mestayer6

Article gives examples that definitely helped me understand the two.

And that what I’m doing is forcing bottom up for the training, I focus to hear sounds not to catch them up from the context and when I look at the sentence I think about which sounds did I really hear. And I find my approach really hard. It’s fun how after reading it and then playing while reading, I can clearly hear it all. :joy:
So I guess I put a lot of effort into it instead of just repeating it out loud. It all started with me trying the training in my bed while hubby was already sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him up or get up. :joy:

About production benefit here https://www.scilearn.com/little-known-truths-about-reading-aloud/4

Now I need to go apologise to my mum, since I always hush her when she starts reading out loud.

You can really learn a lot out of this forum. Thanks @Neville once more

In reply to @Blacky

@Blacky said:

Now you have me bunch of terms I didn’t meet before so I have more things for digging, thanks :smiley:

Sorry! When you do a thing for a long time, sometimes you forget what is common knowledge versus what is field-specific jargon. Also, on the internet you have no idea who everyone else is and what their experience is and so sometimes make some incorrect assumptions.

So, just in case, I’ll post this here. I apologize if it’s too basic for people. But if it’s new stuff. . . the brain really is the coolest thing around.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/human-biology/neuron-nervous-system/v/anatomy-of-a-neuron1

@Neville said:

Sorry! When you do a thing for a long time, sometimes you forget what is common knowledge versus what is field-specific jargon. Also, on the internet you have no idea who everyone else is and what their experience is and so sometimes make some incorrect assumptions.

Um, my thanks was honest one, I love learning new things :smiley: and putting smileys around :smiley:
So feel free to drown me in things that you think could be connected to brain, hearing, training and whatnot :smiley:

@Neville

I just realised that I can’t remember the sentence if I try to speak it out loud. I mean, I lose last part from my brain when it’s its turn to be said out loud. Tested several times.

I hold it long enough to write it down even, but for repeating this sentences are too long for me :joy:

They’re like 10+ words long, I can safely hold like 4-6.

In one of your links, or connected things to them, I’ve seen that people get better retention when they speak out loud, but worse when someone else speaks it out loud.
Seems like I process even my voice as a disturbance and not getting help out of it :rofl:

And I’m literally not sure what I did hear at the end of the sentence when it asks me if I heard everything correctly if I try to repeat it out loud after first play. So I’ll stick to silence, since my goal is to train the hearing and not ‘stop disturbing yourself by speaking out loud’.

My thoughts are in better order when there’s no one saying the same, just out loud. Even if it’s me. And from my mum issue, and from school, it kills my concentration if someone reads out loud thing I need to read and understand. In school I’d always plug my ears with fingers :joy:

I’m laughing and sharing this because I wasn’t aware of that until I tested it now and then it hit me, school memory.

I’ll stick to my silent practice, since it works best for me. I think it could be connected to the fact that I’m not neurotypical, in case you wonder why, to share all background information that I think could be relevant.

But interesting nevertheless.

Interesting.

To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting shadowing the sentence. That is, don’t repeat it as it comes. Hold it silently, and then repeat if after.

Being unable to do that seems like an interesting auditory memory issue (or, perhaps more likely, a issue in encoding auditory information into short term memory) that would be just as worthwhile to improve as speech in noise processing, if possible. It may be useful to read the sentence aloud after writing it down, if that is something that you can do.

For a contrasting experience: Sometimes my friend says something and I’m not really listening, but then when they complain I can repeat back to them what they said and so claim that I was listening all along. The reality is that I wasn’t listening and I only actually process the sentence when I repeat it back, but it was sitting there in my head for me to repeat back.

But it may not be something that can be significantly improved with training. But just knowing that one has difficulty with a specific skill like that allows you to employ strategies to work around it, which is good.

@Neville said:

To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting shadowing the sentence. That is, don’t repeat it as it comes. Hold it silently, and then repeat if after.

Yup, did exactly that what you meant. No go.

But on level 2 which I tried yesterday sentences were really long. Like, long as the previous one or two.

IRL training would do 4-5 words (not counting a, the, and, or and the similar). With that I don’t have a problem.

It might be also that I remember better if I read vs if I hear it. Fun thing is that once I read it/looking at it, I’ll hear every phoneme if clearly spoken. So that’s why it wouldn’t work on me the common advice ‘read and listen the book at the same time’.

But before I lost my hearing several years ago, when I think about it, I always understood better what is written than what I’ve heard. Which is nothing special, ordinary learning pyramid consequence.
No matter if I focus on repeating or not, it’s just how it was/is.
Also, gimme someone speaking nearby, and it will disturb my thoughts. And also, increase stress. Introvert as well.
I need quiet working environment. Since age 5 :smiley:

But also, to me, listening well isn’t the same as remembering it. I’m not interested in topics of the exercise so I don’t feel like wasting energy to try to remember it.
Maybe it could be good training for that, but at the moment I’m definitely ok with my memory abilities, since I live with them so long.
And I extensively use reminders and notes to not bother myself with that trivia. I’d rather spend my concentration on eg learning how to program marvels than onto remembering random sentences just for the sake of that task.

So I believe it’s all interrelated, both my abilities (intelligences included), my attitude and the reason why I do something. We’re definitely not all the same. And it definitely comes to what you also said: ‘know yourself to help yourself’ :slight_smile:

And having one good ear and one really bad one, I’d expect it definitely introduces some deflection from the expected.

For this LACE training, you can only say if you heard it all or not and it adapts exercises on the fly by thay feedback. And I think it would be wrong ti say I didn’t hear it just because I forgot part of it. I mean, definitely now when I’m at the middle of the process, I think it would skew algorithm.
That’s one reason I’m opposed to changes, because I want to test it under same conditions.

But I’ll definitely give it more thought. Altough I think it’s all about the topic, if it’s not my cup of tea, I use those two ears, one in, another out :joy:
And since I want to hear those things that I need/want/am interested in, I don’t think my memory will be a problem.

Anyhow, you’ve thought me a lot here, thanks!

The only difference between auditory training and LACE is that while auditory training managed and aided by physician at the same time LACE is controlled by physical with the help of computerized technique to help people in complete listening.

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