fnagi-06-00347.pdf (6.26 MB)
Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition
journal contribution
posted on 2021-02-10, 11:54 authored by Christian Fullgrabe, Brian CJ Moore, Michael A StoneHearing loss with increasing age adversely affects the ability to understand speech, an effect that results partly from reduced audibility. The aims of this study were to establish whether aging reduces speech intelligibility for listeners with normal audiograms, and, if so, to assess the relative contributions of auditory temporal and cognitive processing. Twenty-one older normal-hearing (ONH; 60-79 years) participants with bilateral audiometric thresholds = 20 dB HL at 0.125-6 kHz were matched to nine young (YNH; 18-27 years) participants in terms of mean audiograms, years of education, and performance IQ. Measures included: (1) identification of consonants in quiet and in noise that was unmodulated or modulated at 5 or 80 Hz; (2) identification of sentences in quiet and in co-located or spatially separated two-talker babble; (3) detection of modulation of the temporal envelope (TE) at frequencies 5-180 Hz; (4) monaural and binaural sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS); (5) various cognitive tests. Speech identification was worse for ONH than YNH participants in all types of background. This deficit was not reflected in self-ratings of hearing ability. Modulation masking release (the improvement in speech identification obtained by amplitude modulating a noise background) and spatial masking release (the benefit obtained from spatially separating masker and target speech) were not affected by age. Sensitivity to TE and TFS was lower for ONH than YNH participants, and was correlated positively with speech-in-noise (SiN) identification. Many cognitive abilities were lower for ONH than YNH participants, and generally were correlated positively with SiN identification scores. The best predictors of the intelligibility of SiN were composite measures of cognition and TFS sensitivity. These results suggest that declines in speech perception in older persons are partly caused by cognitive and perceptual changes separate from age-related changes in audiometric sensitivity.
Funding
Medical Research Council (grant number U135097130).
Flexi-grant (“Effect of aging on auditory temporal processing”) from Action on Hearing Loss (UK).
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Frontiers in Aging NeuroscienceVolume
6Publisher
Frontiers MediaVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Frontiers Media under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2014-12-23Publication date
2015-01-13Copyright date
2015ISSN
1663-4365eISSN
1663-4365Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Deposit date: 10 February 2021Article number
347Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedLicence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC