I have auditory processing difficulties. Among many other sensory challenges. Sitting at a table in a restaurant, I struggle to understand what my friends are saying to me over the din of background chatter, a bartender shaking a drink, back of the house clinking a pan.
I similarly struggle to understand what actors are saying when they’re backed by theme music or other physical things going on as part of (or behind) the story. Captions help me actually consume video rather than feel lost in it. Without text I pretty much would stop consuming video entirely.
Granted, I’m 40 so I can’t speak for the youngs. And I hear just fine in that the sounds are all present in my ears and my brain. They just get jumbled and being able to catch up with text helps immensely.
As one of the younger but not young crowd, I have a form of auditory dyslexia which is why I've used CC and subtitles most of my life. Good sound mixing and actor enunciation helps to a small degree, but my brain garbles the first part of conversation starts and when dialog happens without visual cues.
My hearing is good, but the delays in processing dialog to content make watching movies or tv very frustrating when I can't see the actor's face to lip read or don't have CC to catch what I miss.
On the other side of things, I have a very high level of internal voice so when I am reading text I can 'hear' the dialog in my head. I can listen to the first 20 minutes of a movie or episode or two of a tv show, then watch it muted with subtitles and will hear the actor's voices. It's nice because I can watch shows with my own background music or without disturbing anyone with the audio.
I similarly struggle to understand what actors are saying when they’re backed by theme music or other physical things going on as part of (or behind) the story. Captions help me actually consume video rather than feel lost in it. Without text I pretty much would stop consuming video entirely.
Granted, I’m 40 so I can’t speak for the youngs. And I hear just fine in that the sounds are all present in my ears and my brain. They just get jumbled and being able to catch up with text helps immensely.