acoustic aphasia

noun

Meaning

Difficulty in interpreting or recognizing auditory stimuli, specifically the inability to process spoken language despite having normal hearing.

Examples

  • Clinicians diagnosed the patient with acoustic aphasia after he failed to distinguish between similar-sounding words.
  • Research into acoustic aphasia highlights how brain damage can disrupt the decoding of complex sound patterns.

Synonyms: word deafness, auditory agnosia