Are Hearing problems common with Asperger's?

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I cannot say whether your hearing issues is related to AS or not, but I can say that I have EXTREMELY sensitive hearing and always have. I can hear what people are saying from hundreds of yards away. And anything louder than an average conversation causes my ears to ring for several hours. As far as I know increased senses are a well known symptom of AS.

I have mild hearing loss in one ear, but it's just from loud music. Do you play a lot of music? Is it loud?

Something of a sidenote, but that stuff people say about loud music f*****g up your hearing is entirely true. I'm only 27 and my hearing has been this way for years.

I don't know how common it is, but I don't know many kids on the spectrum (4 including my daughter), and 2 of them have grommets in their ears.

Personally, I have a lot of mucus problems in my ears, nose and sinuses. My hearing is fine, but I have balance issues.

However, I do have an issue with filtering background noise, which makes it difficult to hear what others are saying, when there are other noises going on. I think this is very common among people on here.

I always had ear probems and infections as a kid, had tubes in several times and was considered to have 30% hearing loss. There's no denying I had the infections (I remember screaming with pain and wax and blood coming from my ears), however, I sometimes wonder if I really had any hearing loss at all or whether I just didn't respond to sounds. Obviously I couldn't "cheat" the tests as a baby, but when I got a little older I do remember hearing the beeps but just not pressing the button.

Me,too which can be annoying at times. Once I almost couldn't hear anything on my left ear and badly on my right ear.....because of my mucus.
And...I also am bad at filtering voices from background noises...

I just wanted to point out that acid reflux disease can affect the ears. A lot of people don't know this because there's not a lot of info on it. I'm not exactly sure what happens but either the acid comes back up the throat or the acid creates mucus and either way it can go up into the ears or something like that.

I used to and still have problems with my ears. It was thought that it was a sinus/allergy problem and I was given antihistamines and nasal sprays which never worked. I started taking Prilosec and antacids and the problems with my ears started to go away. Anytime I go off the meds, the problems with my ears start again after several weeks.

I just wanted people to know this so no one has to suffer with ear problems like the way I did. Sadly, none of the many doctors (including specialist) I've seen are educated about the link between acid reflux disease and ear problems.

I had hearing loss as a small child and then I had tubes put in when I was almost two. It made me very sensitive to sound and it took me a while to get used to it and I had a hard time hearing words correctly. I still have a hard time with some sounds and sometimes things sound the same to my ears. My hearing had been testing in the normal range growing up.

Well, I took some hearing tests, with just a single beep every few seconds, raise your hand, those always came out perfect. However, in conversations, I have to ask people to repeat themselves, sometimes like 2-3 times. So I'd say it's auditory processing, which is common in ASD/NVLD, for my case.

For your case, you should get a hearing test. Since you're still in school, usually most school nurses got the hearing test stuff, which just consists of you raising your hand when you hear the sounds, so, just get it done for free, to find out for sure.

@auntblabby: I'll try to remember that if you're ever around when I'm doing audio / acoustics testing with a P.A. system, which includes audio levels testing at 1000 Hz. I wouldn't want to inflict that kind of torture on you.

I have some mild hearing loss along with auditory processing problems, which causes a me lot of problems hearing others' voices in background noise - especially so with women's & children's voices.

thank you for your consideration

my audio difficulties lie in me not being able to [psychoacoustically] filter out background noise, either in crowds of people or in poorly-made audio recordings plagued with extraneous environmental or tape/disc noise. this is what got me involved in the field of audio restoration, because i have thousands of old records [remember those black flat round things?] of which the lions' share have distinct surface noise which interferes with my enjoyment of their musical contents. in robert altman movies, which as a unique artistic trademark feature overlapping dialogue, i can make neither head nor tails out of that aural mess. he made movies ONLY for perfectly functioning NTs, AFAIC. in most movies, i can only understand a fraction of the dialogue as it is, due to the loud background music and effects, in addition to the modern acting practice of mumbling lines.

Hearing problems are common in elderly people.

Sounds identical to the problems I have with hearing dialogue in films with backround sound effects, or talking with traffic, machinery or a boiling kettle in the backround.
I continually ask people to repeat themselves, but may get the meaning before they actually do repeat, I just have a second or two delay between hearing and understanding.
Some people rephrase what they said. I read somewhere that this can help with auditory processing disorder, but it doesn't help me. It confuses and frustrates me because then I am trying to put together two similar messages which mean something similar but then I'm missing bits of both. If people just repeat what they said in the first place then I can fill in the blanks.
So I don't know if its auditory processing disorder or not. My hearing has been tested a few times in my life & is normal.
I also repeat what I read, every sentence or phrase, slows down the pace, but I need to rearrange the words a bit in my head.
Two people talking at the same time just turns all the words to garbage. So does trying to read while there is talking in the room, even though that is supposed to be possible.
Studies show that NTs can read and listen at the same time and make sense of both if they are not very complicated messages. I absolutely cannot do that.
Can't help thinking it must all be connected.
I also have occasional tinnitus and am painfully sensitive to very high pitched noises which others often can't hear. I can't use a digital phone with my right ear because of the fast repeating thuds inside my ear. Fortunately it doesn't happen with my left.

I was born with an asymmetric hearing loss. My left ear is pretty much deaf; my right ear is moderately effected. I wear a hearing aid in my right ear and is enough to make me function. The cause of my hearing loss has never been determined, but I don't think it's related to Asperger's in my case. It's tough for me to communicate with people because the hearing loss negatively impacts verbal communication, while the Asperger's hinders my non-verbal communication.

I find it get's really hard to stay on track of what I have to get done at owrk if there is to many people talking and or to much noise. I also have this problem at home to. When reading I can't have anyone talk to me at all.

The only time I don't have a problem is when I listen to my music or if I go and see a band I like. Then again no one is talking to me at that point.

I have probably damaged my hearing a little bit through wearing a Walkman/iPod over the years.

I seem to be worse at understanding speech than you might expect though, given my level of hearing. I can hear quiet sounds as well as anybody.

Does that make any sense?

I have the problem with not recognising faces quite markedly. Is there a similar thing for speech recognition?

I have recently discovered that I happen to have central audio processing disorder, which according to some sources, might happen to be more common amongst Aspies. It explains alot why I have a hard time understanding when people are talking to me, while I otherwise have excellent hearing.