At this moment, what sounds are going on around you? (You may have to take off your iPod earphones to give an answer.) In our aurally blitzed world, concern is growing that we are fast losing our ability to listen — really listen — to the people and the world around us. This has inspired a university researcher to launch an awareness-raising “sound map” of Britain, as well as prompting our nation’s highest judge to suggest that we should stop expecting future generations to listen to each other and instead leave them to communicate by screen. But a growing body of research shows that there is a high psychological, physical and social cost to losing our listening skills.

“We are so bombarded by sounds that we no longer tune in to our surroundings,” says Charlie Mydlarz, an acoustic engineer at the University of Salford who yesterday launched his national sound map. He is inviting members of the public to use their mobile phones to record ten-second audio clips in places such as parks and streets, then send them to a mapping website.

It is not just “noise that annoys” but the quality of sound that can raise our blood pressure, says Mydlarz. Often we blank stress-inducing noises from our conscious minds — but this renders us aurally illiterate, so there is no public debate on the quality of our surrounding sound. “I am trying to raise people’s awareness,” he says, “so that we can understand what noises we love and hate in our environments and get more sounds that help to keep us psychologically healthy.”

There is another way to cope with the fact that increasingly people are not listening, and that is to give up bothering to use verbal communication. Hence the warning last week by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, that the next generation will be incapable of listening to anyone closely. “My grandchildren don’t learn by listening to people talking at them,” he said, predicting that in 15 years’ time the oral tradition of the courts may have to be rethought and juries given evidence via computer. Lord Judge’s fears are echoed in a report, commissioned by the Government, which admits that we don’t adequately teach our children key listening skills.

In an attention-deficit society, it may be tempting simply to write off one of our five senses — particularly when we read of cases such as that of Ruhela Khanom, 20, a juror thrown off a murder trial in 2007 after the judge complained that she had been listening to music under her headscarf. But that would be to ignore centuries of human wisdom and a wealth of modern research suggesting that if we leave future generations aurally blind, we condemn them to sad, diminished lives in which they are deprived of a vital conduit to health, happiness, love, money and fellowship.

“Listen” is the first word in the Rule of St Benedict, by which many monks conduct their lives of deep contemplation. This sense of sacred connection is also at the heart of the Chinese written character meaning “to listen”, which is made up of the symbols for ears, eyes, undivided attention and heart. In the Jewish tradition, there is an old rabbinical saying that reminds us to keep shtoom and pay heed: “When God gave us one mouth and two ears, it was to tell us that we should listen twice as much as we talk.” When we open these doors of perception we can relax in the quietly attentive delights of book readings, recitals, concerts and lectures. Children growing up in a world of blaring noise, in which they face information overload, rapid-fire communications and too-busy parents, may be robbed of such pleasures.

Although the teaching of listening skills has become increasingly marginalised, research indicates that listening is still the first language skill that most children develop in their steps to understand the world. About 80 per cent of what children come to know is acquired through listening, says Richard Hunsaker, a leading communications educationist: the average pupil spends between 65 and 90 per cent of his or her school day listening.

Other research suggests that teaching listening skills helps children to understand how spelling, reading and language work. One study indicates that such lessons ultimately produce a higher level of improvement in spelling tests than other methods. But according to the latest UK government report on primary education, listening skills are often pushed aside by the national curriculum’s demand for schools continually to “teach and test”.

The Rose review, which was published this year, stresses that “listening skills should be more prominent”, although its author, the former Ofsted director of inspection Sir Jim Rose, concedes that the next government may well take no notice of the advice.

Yet listening is a crucial skill for both life and love. As a journalist trainee, I was encouraged to shut up and pay attention (it makes for a better interview) by being told that men who actually listen are rare and consequently highly sought-after by women. My tutor was apparently right: the study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 suggested that, while women are more attracted to the strong, silent type of man, the key is not strength but, rather, attentive silence. The men rated most romantic by women were those who had perfected the art of listening. The highest scorers tended to ask women “what do you want?”, then actually heard the answers.

One reason why we are increasingly deaf to our world is that we feel compelled to tune out maddeningly loud surroundings. Some 32 million people in the UK are exposed to high levels of noise, according to government figures. The official 2008 National Noise Survey says that each year, fewer people think that they can find quiet places near them. Only a third consider their local countryside, woods and parks to be peaceful.

An increasingly common response is for us to “bubble” ourselves inside a pair of headphones, so that at least the noise we hear is self-selected. But this urge for aural control takes us away from the habit of listening for the ambient and the unexpected. Such quiet attentiveness appears vital for our mental health. “Only in complete silence, one starts to hear,” says Philip Groening, a film director who spent nearly six months alone filming his awardwinning feature Into Great Silence in a Trappist monastery in the French Alps.

Constant noise can exact a serious psychological toll. A study review by Belgrade Medical School found that areas with high urban noise have higher admission rates to psychiatric hospitals and higher levels of fatigue and anxiety. As a result, increasingly we have to pay people — psychotherapists — to listen to us, as no one else seems willing or able. As any shrink will tell you, a major part of the healing process is to help patients to hear what they themselves are saying. But it seems that we are not even listening to ourselves that much.

Careful listening can have a crucial bearing on the physical healthcare that we receive, too. As doctors rely increasingly on beep-laden high-tech tests of heart function such as echocardiographs, the art of listening to the heart has fallen into abeyance. In recent years, studies have indicated that as few as 20 per cent of new doctors can discern the difference between a healthy and a sick heart just by listening to someone’s ticker. Furthermore, other studies suggest that patients who feel that their doctors listen attentively to what they have to say tend to have faster recovery rates.

Good ears are the secret of business success, too. “No one ever listened themselves out of a job,” as the 1920s US President Calvin Coolidge once said. But again, listening is becoming an increasingly rare ability. Lee Iacocca, former chief of the Chrysler Corporation, recently lamented: “I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realise that real communication goes in both directions.”

So, for adults as well as children, a quick reminder of what it takes to listen may prove handy. Here is a primer for attentive listening, taken from an American educational book, Sweet Communications:

Sit still (or at least, fairly still for boys. A bit of fidgeting helps males to concentrate, apparently). Give the speaker lots of eye contact. Think about what the speaker is saying. Think about what you would like to ask. Wait until the speaker has finished speaking ... then wait until you have finished listening before you speak. Repeat the information in your own words. Say something, take notes or nod to show that you heard and understood. Predict what will happen next. Then relate what you have just heard to what you already know.

There, that should do it. Hello? Sorry, are you still with me?

Salford University’s sound-mapping project is at soundaroundyou.com