Sometimes the cause of poor listening skills in children and adults is a hearing impairment. People with hearing loss in one ear may be able to hear conversations in quiet environments, but have trouble when the environment is noisy. People with undiagnosed hearing loss may not be aware that they have a problem. Hearing loss usually has an identifiable physical cause and can often be improved or corrected with hearing aids or surgery.
Children and adults with auditory processing disorder may have normal hearing. They may be able to hear sounds perfectly, but have difficulty discerning individual words. They may be unable to distinguish words that are different but have similar sounds. In turn, they may have difficulty making sense of conversations that contain complex ideas or that take place in noisy rooms. People suspected of having auditory processing disorder should be evaluated by a professional.
A 2004 study led by Dimitri Christakis of Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle found that toddlers who watched too much television developed problems with concentration and attention. The study found that children who watched three hours of television a day between the ages of one and three were 30 percent more likely to have problems with attention at age seven than children who had watched no television at all. Since the ability to concentrate and pay attention are key factors in being a good listener, too much television watching at an early age might arguably contribute to poor listening skills later in life.
People who are in conflict tend to tune each other out. When one person talks, the other, instead of listening, thinks about what he or she is going to say when it is his or her turn to speak. People in conflict may also assume they know what the other person will say before he or she even says it and therefore do not feel the need to listen. They may also distort what they hear by interpreting it in a way least favorable to the other person.