Healthy aging is accompanied by listening difficulties, including decreased speech comprehension, that stem from an ill-understood combination of sensory and cognitive changes. Here, we use electroencephalography to demonstrate that auditory neural oscillations of older adults entrain less firmly and less flexibly to speech-paced (∼3 Hz) rhythms than younger adults’ during attentive listening. These neural entrainment effects are distinct in magnitude and origin from the neural response to sound per se. Non-entrained parieto-occipital alpha (8–12 Hz) oscillations are enhanced in young adults, but suppressed in older participants, during attentive listening. Entrained neural phase and task-induced alpha amplitude exert opposite, complementary effects on listening performance: higher alpha amplitude is associated with reduced entrainment-driven behavioural performance modulation. Thus, alpha amplitude as a task-driven, neuro-modulatory signal can counteract the behavioural corollaries of neural entrainment. Balancing these two neural strategies may present new paths for intervention in age-related listening difficulties.

These findings identify AMRD thresholds as a reliable, nonredundant predictor above and beyond established speech tests for CI outcome. This AMRD test could potentially be developed into a rapid clinical temporal-resolution test to be integrated into the postoperative test battery to improve the reliability of speech outcome prognosis.

Children currently grow up with a marked increase in interactive digital mobile media. To what extent digital media directly modulate children’s perception and attention is largely unknown. We investigated the processing of task-irrelevant auditory information while 37 children aged 6;8–9;1-years played the identical card game on a tablet PC or with the experimenter in reality. The sound sequence included repeated standard sounds and occasionally novel sounds. Event-related potentials in the EEG, that reflect sound-related processes of perception and attention, were measured. Sounds evoked increased amplitudes of the ERP components P1, P2 and P3a during the interaction with the tablet PC compared to the human interaction. This indicates enhanced early processing of task-irrelevant information and increased allocation of attention to sounds throughout the interaction with a tablet PC compared to a human partner. Results suggest direct effects of typical situations, where children interact with a tablet PC, on neuronal mechanisms that drive perception and attention in the developing brain. More research into this phenomena is required to make specific suggestions for developing digital interactive learning programs.