Auditory/Aural Learning: Statistics, Facts and Trends Guide for 2025

Auditory learning is a learning style where a person learns best by listening to information.

But, is auditory learning effective? Are there plenty of people who identify themselves as auditory learners?

Is auditory learning better than visual and kinesthetic learning?

My updated auditory learning statistics guide for 2025 has everything you need to know.

Use this jump link to quickly jump to the KEY STATS section.

Also, all the references and resources I used in crafting my guide are listed at the bottom of the page.

Jump here: Key Auditory Learning Statistics, Facts and Trends for This Year| Auditory Learning Statistics, Facts and Trends for This Year (Detailed Info)

Key Auditory Learning Statistics, Facts and Trends for This Year

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Auditory Learning Statistics, Facts and Trends for This Year (Detailed Info)

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What Percentage of the Population are Primarily Auditory Learners?

Approximately 30% of the population are primarily auditory learners. 65% of the population are visual learners while 5% are kinesthetic learners. (Source)

Interestingly, the percentage of school children who’re auditory learners is a bit lower than the 30% for adults. About 20-30% of school-age children are thought to be auditory learners. (Source)

How Much Faster Does the Human Brain Process Auditory Information Compared to Visual Information?

The human brain processes auditory information 400 times faster than visual information. This is despite the fact that human brain can register an image in as little as 13 milliseconds. But registering something is not understanding it and auditory comprehension is so much faster than grasping a visual, a picture. (Source)

That said, combining learning methods is better than each individual learning style. Repeated studies have shown that retention rates for auditory learning can be as high as 75% when combined with visual aids. (Source)

On Average, What Percentage of Lecture Content do Auditory Learners Typically Retain?

Auditory learners typically retain 75% of what they hear in a lecture. And as you saw from the stat above, if their teacher besides talking at least tries to teach visually as well, the learner’s retention rates will grow even more. (Source)

Proof to that is the recent study (that I link in the footer of the page) that showed the average person can remember only 10% of what they read, but 50% of what they hear and see. (Source)

Also know that auditory memory peaks in most individuals between ages 20-25, which means students are most likely to benefit from receiving the bulk of their lessons in audio format. In fact, in a recent survey 68% of students reported better understanding of complex topics when explained verbally. (Source)

What Percentage of School-Age Children are Affected by Auditory Processing Disorders?

Auditory processing disorders affect about 5% of school-age children. This basically means these 5% of children are either visual learners or kinesthetic learners. Not by choice, but because they can’t comprehend well auditory information. (Source)

By What Percentage Can Music Improve Memory Retention in Auditory Learning?

Music can improve auditory learning, with studies showing up to a 12% increase in memory retention. The key here is that music should complement audio lessons and not overwhelm them. (Source)

Background instrumental music works best here.

What Percentage of People Find Human Voices More Compelling Than Robotic Voices in Educational Content?

70% of people find human voices more compelling than robotic voices in educational content. This stat is especially important now that OpenAI and other AI companies are racing to release human-like AI voices generators that are almost indistinguishable from real human voices. (Source)

However, most real humans can tell when they’re listening to a robot speaking to them and they aren’t impressed.

Note: there’s little doubt that as time goes by and technology advances there’s going to be a wider adoption of these emerging voice-based technologies. Already, use of voice-based AI assistants for learning has increased by 65% since 2020. (Source)

What Percentage of Teachers Report Increased Student Engagement When Using Audio Resources?

94% of teachers report that using audio resources increases student engagement. Perhaps that’s the reason why the use of audiobooks in schools has increased by 48% over the past five years. (Source)

And perhaps increased usage of of audio resources in school setting have caused a general rise in usage of auditory learning mediums? For example, podcasts have seen a 37.5% increase in listeners since 2017. And in 2024 47% of the 12+ population in the US (41% globally) are monthly podcast listeners (Source)

With that said, there’ a definite con to school lessons increasingly being geared towards auditory learners. The disadvantage is for visual and kinesthetic learners who are forced to learn in suboptimal ways for them which means their grades will suffer.

In classrooms there should be some kind of balance so no one group of children gets an unfair advantage over the other.

What is the Projected Value of the Global Market for Audio-Based Learning?

The global market for audio-based learning is expected to reach $17.7 billion by 2025. And with a compound annual growth rate of 26.2% the global market for audio books is expected to reach $35.04 billion by 2030. (Source)

There’s no mystery here. People love to listen to new info and are highly adept at learning by hearing the information. The average person can understand speech at rates of up to 400 words per minute. (Source)

Furthermore, auditory learning techniques have been shown to improve language acquisition by up to 40%. (Source)

And students who use audio learning materials score an average of 27% higher on verbal learning tests. (Source)

What Percentage of Educators Believe Audio Resources Help Students with Reading Difficulties?

73% of educators believe that audio resources help students with reading difficulties. In fact, auditory learners with clear reading impediments are 35% more likely to participate in class discussions compared to visual learners. (Source)

How Much More Likely are Auditory Learners to Pursue Careers in Music, Linguistics, or Public Speaking?

Studies show that auditory learners are 28% more likely to pursue careers in music, linguistics, or public speaking. (Source)

This makes sense just as it makes sense for kinesthetic learners to prefer careers where there’s a lot of movement as part of the job; and for visual learners to prefer jobs where they can learn and express themselves visually and through visual-based mediums.

Auditory/Aural Learning Style Statistics, Facts and Trends for 2025 (FAQ)

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What is Auditory Learning Style? Definition and Meaning

Auditory learning is a learning style where a person learns best by listening to information. Auditory learners prefer to listen to information instead of reading textbooks or figuring things out hands-on. Auditory learners also love to speak out loud to process information faster and better.

How Does Auditory Processing Disorder Affect Learning?

Auditory processing disorder affects learning and affects it in the negative way.

Students with APD often have have trouble understanding speech, especially when there are other loud sounds or voices in the background. The same students usually also have problems understanding speech that is spoken quickly or in a noisy room.

Students with APD also have difficulty following verbal directions, especially if they are long or complex.

These are some major problems problems students with APD have, but it’s not an exhaustive list. These student also have trouble understanding humor, verbal math, spelling… They are also ineffective at remembering information and learning foreign languages.

Which Learning Style is Employed When you Read a Newspaper: Kinesthetic, Auditory, Visual or Interpersonal?

When reading a newspaper, the primary learning style employed is visual as when reading a paper you primarily absorb information through the written, printed text on the page, relying on your sight to process the information.

So reading newspapers doesn’t involve auditory, kinesthetic and interpersonal learning styles.

What are Some Examples and Strategies of Auditory Learning Style?

Here are some examples and strategies for auditory learners:

• Record lectures and listen to recordings: Record lessons and lectures and review them later, while multitasking.
• Read and recite aloud: Read aloud to yourself or with a partner. This will help you both memorize better, even if your partner is not an auditory learner.
• Use rhymes: if you have a poetic string in you you can use rhymes to help you memorize. Don’t force it if you’re not capable of effective and efficient rhyming (meaning it shouldn’t take you 30m to create rhymes).
• Participate in discussions: Participate in class discussions by talking and listening. That way you’ll all learn better and retain that information better.
• Use background music: Use background music to enhance your learning. Music can improve auditory learning, with studies showing up to a 12% increase in memory retention
• Use mnemonics: Create mnemonics for important information to help memorize and recall it later.
• Create sound effects: Create sound effects for stories to engage auditory learners.

What are Some Characteristics of Auditory Learners?

Some of the typical characteristics of auditory learners are:

• They prefer verbal instruction: auditory learners highly benefit from oral instructions lectures and discussions, and prefer spoken directions over written directions.
• Enjoy talking: auditory learners like to talk about what to do, and enjoy hearing themselves and others talk. They may also talk to themselves aloud, or mouth words while reading.
• Remember names: auditory learners tend to forget faces but remember names excellently.
• Easily distracted: Auditory learners often have difficulty concentrating in both noisy environments and during quiet work or study.
• Benefit from repetition: auditory learners learn well from auditory repetition, and will grasp key concepts fully just by hearing information repeated multiple times (similar to linguistic learners who also disproportionally benefit from verbal information)
• Express emotion through voice: Auditory learners may indicate emotion through the tone, pitch, and volume of their voices.
• Enjoy music: auditory learners love music (often classical music), and may hum or sing along with the song.
• Have trouble writing down information: Auditory learners may have trouble writing down information accurately. This is because they’re so used to hearing and remembering that they almost forget they can also write things down.

How Does Auditory Learning Compares to Kinesthetic Learning?

Auditory and kinesthetic learning style are two vastly different ways of taking in information, and both are effective and both can also be combined for superb results:

Auditory learning involves learning best through sound and other auditory stimuli. Auditory learners enjoy listening, prefer spoken directions, are easily distracted, tend to remember well spoken information but struggle with visual, kinesthetic and interpersonal learning methods.

Kinesthetic learning involves learning through touch, motion and movement. Kinesthetic learners love building sets, model kits, and interactive displays, and they may tear things apart to learn about them.

How Does Auditory Learning Compares to Visual Learning?

Auditory and visual learning style are two vastly different ways of taking in information, and both are effective and both can also be combined for superb results:

Auditory learning involves learning best through sound and other auditory stimuli. Auditory learners enjoy listening, prefer spoken directions, are easily distracted, tend to remember well spoken information but struggle with visual, kinesthetic and interpersonal learning methods. They are also able to learn alone if necessary which brings them closer to people who employ intrapersonal learning style, i.e., solitary learners.

Visual learners prefer to learn through visual resources like pictures, diagrams, charts, and movies. Visual learners have a strong visual memory and are able to easily recall details from visual stimuli with ease.

Visual learners are creative, observant, and detail-oriented but they often struggle with absorbing Information that’s not delivered in their preferred way.

For example, visual learner can hear spoken instructions on how to find a restaurant right now, and 5m later they’ve already forgotten the directions. Whereas if they saw a map, they could picture that map inside their mind almost as if they’re holding it right in front of their eyes.

How Does Auditory Learning Compares to Interpersonal Learning?

Auditory and interpersonal learning style are two vastly different ways of taking in information, and both are effective and both can also be combined for superb results:

Auditory learning involves learning best through sound and other auditory stimuli. Auditory learners enjoy listening, prefer spoken directions, are easily distracted, tend to remember well spoken information but struggle with visual, kinesthetic and interpersonal learning methods.

Interpersonal learning involves learning best through communication with others. Interpersonal learners are good at cooperating, working in teams, listening to peers and respecting their opinion, building people skills and empathy…

What are Some Jobs Good for Auditory Learners?

Studies show that auditory learners are 28% more likely to pursue careers in music, linguistics, or public speaking.

Some of the jobs good for auditory learners are:

• Guidance counselor;
• Customer service professional;
• Audiologists.
• Musician;
• Disc jockeys;
• Sales professional;
• Sound engineer;
• Attorney;
• Psychiatrist or therapist;
• Speech pathologist;
• Translator;
• Journalists;
• Writers;
• Teachers;

This is not an exhaustive job list for auditory learners. It also doesn’t mean auditory learners can’t be successful with other types of work.

People are very adaptive creatures.

Do Auditory Learners Have an Easier Time Mastering a Foreign Language?

Auditory learners have an easier time mastering a foreign language. This is because language is best learned listening and  and trying to converse into it. And auditory learners have a natural knack and advantage here because they’re fine-tuned to pick up auditory stimuli.

What are the Advantages of Auditory Learning Style?

The advantages and pros of auditory learning are:

• Improved retention– auditory learners are better at remembering information they hear, and can often recall details from presentations and discussions easier than kinesthetic, visual and interpersonal learners.
• Better comprehension– when students can easily hear and understand what’s being taught clearly, they are better able to engage with the material and make connections between different concepts.
• Improved speaking skills– auditory learning helps students develop their listening and speaking skills.
• Enhanced critical thinking– auditory learning helps students reflect on and fully comprehend their point of view.
• Better social skills– Auditory learning encourages children to interact with others and share ideas (see my interactive learning statistics post for more details), which helps them build their vocabulary, communication skills and social connections with their peers.
• Multitasking- auditory learners can learn while listening and doing other activities. While multitasking is often detrimental to learning, it can still come in handy and a typical auditory learner here has an advantage over other types of learners.
• Availability of auditory content– nowadays technology and AI offer a lot of auditory learning content including audiobooks, videos, podcasts, AI-generated podcasts…

What are the Disadvantages of Auditory Learning Style?

The disadvantages and cons of auditory learning are:

• Distractions– auditory learners are fine tuned to pick up sound from the environment which means they’re also highly susceptible to distractions. If you’re an auditory learner, having strong focus is crucial for you.
• Attention span– similarly, auditory learners often have a lower attention span and find it more challenging to maintain focus for longer.
• Disruptive– Auditory learners love to ask questions and speak out loud during class. This can be disruptive to other students.
• Written comprehension– Auditory learners quite often struggle with written instructions, reports, or assessments. When reading they’re likely to miss out on key information in readings due to the lack of change in intonation.
• Retaining information– Auditory learners may struggle to retain information that’s not delivered in auditory form.
• Test-taking- test-taking is generally more challenging for auditory learners as they may take longer to process visual information.

Is Auditory Learning a Disability?

Auditory learning is not a disability. It’s just a different way to absorb information. It has it’s benefits and disadvantages (see above for more info).

Auditory Learning Statistics, Facts and Trends for 2025 (Conclusion)

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My updated guide for 2025 lists the best and latest statistics, facts and trends about auditory learning and how to best take advantage of it if you’re an auditory learner.

I hope you enjoyed it because the guide is now over.

I used these resource when creating my stats guide here:

References:

• Learning Styles of Medical Students – Implications in Education- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340450/
• Auditory Learners- https://www.studyingstyle.com/auditory-learners/
• Auditory Learner: Characteristics & Benefits- https://bau.edu/blog/auditory-learner/
• Good Listeners: The Science (and Myths) Behind Auditory Learning- https://eclipsesoundscapes.org/good-listeners/
• A Breakdown of the Auditory Learning Style- https://www.crawfordinternational.co.za/blog/auditory-learning-style
• Classification of Visual and Non-visual Learners Using Electroencephalographic Alpha and Gamma Activities- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6513874/
• Auditory learning- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_learning
• Do people with higher IQs tend to prefer visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning and processing?- https://www.quora.com/Do-people-with-higher-IQs-tend-to-prefer-visual-auditory-or-kinesthetic-learning-and-processing
• TIL that the widely accepted “Learning Styles” theory “everyone has a different learning style (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic)” has almost no experimental data behind it. The few researches done on the subject proved the opposite.- https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/12dvxx4/til_that_the_widely_accepted_learning_styles/
• How to work best with the 4 different types of learners- https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/how-to-work-4-different-learning-types
• Listen Well, Learn Well: Working with Auditory Learners- https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/listen-well-learn-well-working-auditory-learners
• 65% of People Prefer Visual Learning, Is Teaching Keeping Up?- https://blog.videoscribe.co/65-of-people-prefer-visual-learning-is-teaching-keeping-up
• What’s their learning style? Part 1: Auditory learners- https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/whats_their_learning_style_part_1_auditory_learners
• Auditory Learner Characteristics- https://secure.studentachievement.colostate.edu/learningstyles/auditory.aspx
• Auditory Learning Style: Characteristics, Benefits & Strategies- https://www.simplek12.com/learning-theories-strategies/auditory-learning-style/
• The Auditory Learner
  An Examination of Changing Learning Styles and Expectations in Higher Education- https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/3029
• Consider yourself a ‘visual’ or ‘auditory’ learner? Turns out, there’s not much science behind learning styles.- https://theworld.org/stories/2017/09/10/consider-yourself-visual-or-auditory-learner-turns-out-there-s-not-much-science
• Auditory Learning Style- https://www.time4learning.com/learning-styles/auditory-aural.html
• Learning Styles Don’t Actually Exist, Studies Show- https://fee.org/articles/learning-styles-don-t-actually-exist-studies-show/
• Assessment of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning style among undergraduate nursing students- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285618494_Assessment_of_visual_auditory_and_kinesthetic_learning_style_among_undergraduate_nursing_students
• How do you teach art to students who are auditory learners? https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtEd/comments/htrpai/how_do_you_teach_art_to_students_who_are_auditory/
• Examples of auditory learning style- https://www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/childhood/professionals/support/egsls.pdf
• 8 Best Auditory Learning Techniques: A Teachers’ Guide- https://www.splashlearn.com/blog/auditory-learning-techniques-to-help-teachers-get-actionable-results/