LACE Auditory Rehabilitation

Whether you wear hearing instruments, are just acquiring devices, or simply wish to improve your listening skills, LACE – Listening and Communication Enhancement – training will help you get the most out of the sounds of life. Because it is a computerized, internet-based program, we can track your results and discuss them with you.

Hearing vs. Listening

Did you know that we don’t really hear with our ears? Ears do the listening, but we hear with our brain. Hearing instruments can help a person detect softer sounds, but they don’t necessarily provide good listening skills.

Even people with normal hearing can be poor listeners. Good listening skills are one of the essential components in effective communication. These abilities can be damaged both by hearing loss and by the natural aging process. LACE is designed to enhance the ability to communicate by training the brain to best utilize these skills.

Muscle Memory Training for Your Hearing

LACE is an acronym for Listening and Communication Enhancement. Conceived by leading audiologists at the University of California at San Francisco, LACE is an interactive computerized training program that helps improve your ear-to-brain muscle memory.

LACE focuses on the five challenges of listening:

  • Speech in background noise (like restaurants or parties)
  • Rapid speech (when people are speaking quickly)
  • Competing speaker (two people are speaking and the “noise” is other people near them speaking)
  • Missing word (If you miss a word in a conversation, can you still understand the message?)
  • Auditory working memory (If you miss a piece of the conversation, how long does it take you to accurately understand what was said?)
  • LACE has already helped thousands of people who live with some degree of hearing loss increase their listening skills by up to 45%. Just as physical therapy can help rebuild physical strength and compensate for weakness, LACE can assist in developing listening, communication, and interaction skills.