Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on the new trick to hearing conversations in noisy places

Have you ever found yourself nodding along in a noisy bar, pretending to understand your friend’s story, but truthfully, you’re just hoping for a quieter moment to catch the plot?  

You’re not alone. Hearing conversation in loud environments is something many of us struggle with. But thanks to a new study published in the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society B - science might have a simple fix! 

All you need to do is tap your fingers to a beat, before the talking starts. 

The researchers explored whether rhythmic motor priming, like tapping your finger to a beat, could help your brain process speech more efficiently in noisy environments. Participants listened to long sentences buried in background noise. Right before the sentence began, some were asked to tap along to a beat at different speeds, like one tap every half-second or so. The other participants didn’t tap at all. 

After the sentence, all participants had to identify a word they’d just heard. 

They found that the people who tapped at a specific rhythm, around 1.5 to 2 times per second, did noticeably better at understanding the sentence, even in the noisy environment. 

It turns out that this tapping rate lines up with the natural pace of words in human speech (called the “lexical rate”) and helps your brain tune in more effectively. Think of it like syncing up your brain's "listening rhythm" with the speaker’s flow. 

The study also supports a growing idea in neuroscience: our motor system (the one that moves your body) also plays a role in how we listen. When we move rhythmically, even just by tapping a finger, it seems to help our brains track the rhythm of speech. 

It’s an easy, no-tech, zero-cost hack to try the next time you are in a noisy café or busy dinner party.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Joining me now with her science study of the weakers,
Doctor Michelle and deer Concern. Good morning, Michelle, good morning.
I found this fascinating.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm not it's not what you're expecting.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
No, it wasn't, but I do suffer from that. I'm
like a lot of people that if you get into
a crowded restaurant or in a crowded room and everybody's talking,
I find it hard to just hear the person that's
talking directly to me. So I was like, okay, okay, great,
what I have to do. But I was not expecting this.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Yeah, and it affects a lot of people, especially because
the world is just so noisy. I don't know if
it's just me getting old and grumpy, but I feel
like every time I go to a restaurant a ba
the background music is already so loud, and then for
some reason they don't have soft furnishings in the place,
and so all people talking just echoes, and I'm like.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
It's too much. I need to go home.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
But now there's a solution, because I'm this person I
just nod and pretend that I understand the person across
from me and what they're saying, whereas most time I
can't hear anything.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
And so this study was looking.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
At, you know, how you might help to hear conversations
in a busy room.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Now what they said in the.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Study, and this study is published in the Proceedings of
the Royal Society b if you want to read it.
They said, first of all, if you're struggling, make sure
you get your ears tested, because this is only going
to work if you have reasonable hearing. If you can't
hear because you have a hearing difficulty, this solution.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Is not going to work.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
So if you can't hear a noisy barce, do go
get your ears checked first. However, if your ears are
good and it's just a little bit noisy, this is
what you need to do. What they did is they
took thirty five volunteers and they played a sentence for
them with differing amounts of background noises, and they asked
the volunteers, can you write down every word you can
hear in this sentence you're supposed to be listening to.

(01:54):
And they made them do that with different things. So
some of the people had to say certain words before
they started the listing process. They had to do certain movements,
but one group had to tap their fingers, and different
parts of the group tap their fingers at different rates,
so some tap them really first some and they found

(02:15):
that there was a Goldilocks moment, which we'll talk about.
And what they found is the people who could understand
and hear the most words in the sentence while the
background noise was going were people who tapped their fingers
approximately once every sort of second, once every two seconds,
that sort of pace, and they could hear it almost

(02:39):
all of the sentences. Now, the rule was they had
to be tapping before the speaking started, but about one
and a halfter two times per second tapping. That's the
perfect tap. And if you tap at that rate, you
can hear what people are saying.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Okay, So it's just a manner of getting that right.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
I did is I started, I got I went on
the internet and I was like, how fast is that?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I got a tap? And then I started tapping my.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Finger and I better all work if you're tapping your toe,
if you don't want to look like you're tapping while
people are talking. So I started practicing it by tapping
my toe at this rate. So even if you just
do it sort of once a second is about right and.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
So you can hear it. So if you want something
to do with your Easter.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
Sunday, pull up one and a half to two times
tapping per second, so tap every thirty seconds or so
and just practice that and get that used to that.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
So why is this happening? So the paper is really lovely.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
What they have found is actually we're active listeners literally,
as in there's a part of our body, our sort
of motor system, the part that is in control of
how we move that also helps your brain to tune
in more efficiently. We listen not just with our ears,
but we actually listen with our body and it's a

(04:00):
really unique thing and people don't think about it like
I've got this whole hearing system.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Why is that?

Speaker 4 (04:05):
But your motor system that your body plays a role
in how we listen. And when we are more rhythmic,
it seems to help our brains to track our speech.
So why does this speed work while they're sort of
one and a half.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
To two times per second tap.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Is about the cadence of how we speak, and so
if you think about, even if you just listen to
sentences we speak at about that cadence. And so this
is what we call the lexicon, how fast or slow
we speak. And so it seems that tapping at that speed,
taps at the rhythm that people speak at and allows
your body to think about the words as a physical

(04:44):
movement and then you just lock in on those words
and then your brain can block out everything else that's
going on behind you.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Amazing, amazing. I'll definitely give that a go. Thank you
so much, Michelle, appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudken, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.