What Smartphone Apps and Games are Available to Exercise Your Listening Skills?

Hearing loss is a serious problem, but you can still entertain yourself while exercising your ears. Practice activities to keep your sense of hearing in tip-top shape. Here’s a list of apps and activities that hearing aid users and non-hearing aid users of all ages can do each day.

Children’s Hearing Exercise Apps

Auditory Workout

This app was developed for 4 to 12-year-olds who have auditory comprehension and processing disorders. It was created by a certified speech and language pathologist. The app features over 1,000 listening exercises that concentrate on correcting auditory attention and memory. Directions to exercise a person's comprehension are given verbally. In the game, a virtual basketball coach rewards users with a basketball for every correct answer. 

AB Listening Adventures (iPad only)  

Adults who care for children (ages 4 to 10) with hearing loss will love this app! The program guides and develops listening and language skills that use six different story-based games which concentrate on listening for various elements, plurals, pronouns, or minimal pairs.   

VocAB Scenes (iPad only)

Children between the ages of 4 and 10, who experience hearing loss, can expand their vocabulary with fun and different scenes. These include outdoor fun in the water, beach scenery, a pet store, a swimming pool, camping, and a wintery setting. A caregiver or therapist can assist the child during listening exercises utilizing three different games for each scene to encourage language development and listening skills. 

Hearing Exercise Apps for Adults and Children

Hear Coach (Android or iOS - iPad and iPhone)

Starkey Hearing Technologies developed this app. It features listening games that teach the auditory system how to listen in numerous situations. The games are helpful for anyone with hearing loss, especially those who have difficulty hearing when there’s too much background noise.

LACE Auditory Training programs (Computer/laptop, iPad, or Android device)

LACE can be used by children and adults to practice listening and communication skills. It features a daily training program that develops methods on how to communicate in busy settings. The training sessions last about 20 minutes.

Forbrain®

Forbrain® uses a person’s voice to increase their attention span, sharpen concentration, memory, and pronunciation. This bone-conduction headphone (for children and adults), has a filtered microphone that is used while talking out loud or to a person. The architects of this headset advise using the program for a few minutes every day for a minimum of six weeks. 

Auditory Training - Use a Wide Range of Sounds

Enhance your auditory memory by recognizing environmental sounds. Practice listening to voices with activities that incorporate 209 varieties of animal, musical instruments, transportation sounds, and more.  

Hearing Hunt

Do you enjoy word searches? Then you will like Hearing Hunt. This game lets users listen to word-clues and try to beat the clock to figure out the words to search. The game has three levels of difficulty and can be used with Bluetooth®-enabled hearing aids. 

Games 4 Hearoes (iPad)  

This interactive auditory training program can help new hearing aid users recognize and remember sounds from their environment and vocabulary. There are 30 activities that concentrate on five main areas to help new users familiarize themselves with the sounds to gain confidence. 

AudioCardio (iOS)

This app can teach your brain to detect noise by playing sounds that are just below detectable levels for you. After the training session, you can create a personalized “sound therapy” to listen to while engaging in other activities. The app’s developers claim that this will lead to an improvement in your hearing health. 

Hearing Exercise Offline

Online brain games can be fun, but some day-to-day exercises for your brain can be done at home.

• Turn on some music, or the TV, at a normal volume level for you. Then engage in conversations with others who are in the room with you. Concentrate on the discussion while tuning out the other sound.
• Close your eyes. Ask a friend or family member to quietly move to different parts of the room and make a noise. Try to determine where the sound is coming from, and then try to figure how far the person is sitting or standing.

Solo Hearing Activities

• Meditate. Most sound recognition happens in the brain, so it’s important to figure out ways to improve your ability to concentrate. This will help with how you hear. Meditation doesn’t just improve your attention. It also stimulates the blood flow in your body. Proper blood circulation to your ears is important for your hearing health, along with your overall health. 
• Sing. If you want to improve upon your capability of understanding speech while filtering out distracting background noise, practice singing. A study determined that this can improve speech-in-noise perception in adults who experience presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss.
• Yoga and exercise. Exercising improves blood circulation and overall health. 

If you, or a loved one, are experiencing hearing loss, please contact us at Pure Sound Hearing for a free hearing test and consultation. We offer a variety of hearing aid styles and brands for a wide range of hearing loss.  

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