Age Impacts Speech-in-Noise Recognition Differently for Nonnative and Native Listeners

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore potential differences in suprathreshold auditory function among native and nonnative speakers of English as a function of age. Method: Retrospective analyses were performed on three large data sets containing suprathreshold auditory tests completed by 5,572 participants who were self-identified native and nonnative speakers of English between the ages of 18–65 years, including a binaural tone detection test, a digit identification test, and a sentence recognition test. Results: The analyses show a significant interaction between increasing age and participant group on tests involving speech-based stimuli (digit strings, sentences) but not on the binaural tone detection test. For both speech tests, differences in speech recognition emerged between groups during early adulthood, and increasing age had a more negative impact on word recognition for nonnative compared to native participants. Age-related declines in performance were 2.9 times faster for digit strings and 3.3 times faster for sentences for nonnative participants compared to native participants. Conclusions: This set of analyses extends the existing literature by examining interactions between aging and self-identified native English speaker status in several auditory domains in a cohort of adults spanning young adulthood through middle age. The finding that older nonnative English speakers in this age cohort may have greater-than-expected deficits on speech-in-noise perception may have clinical implications on how these individuals should be diagnosed and treated for hearing difficulties.

Current age and language use impact speech-in-noise differently for monolingual and bilingual adults

“…The goal of this study was to examine the impact of two aspects of bilingual language experience on English speech-in-noise recognition in a large participant cohort in order to expand on prior findings indicating an exaggerated effect of aging on speech-in-nose recognition in bilingual adults (Phillips et al, 2024). In the present study, monolingual and bilingual adults completed the MRT, a word-level measure of speech recognition in noise with accuracy and response times as the outcome measures of interest.…”

“…Current Age. This study was motivated in part by prior findings documenting a stronger effect of current age on accurate recognition of low-context sentences and digit strings in self-identified non-native speakers of English as compared to their native speaker peers (Phillips et al, 2024). In that prior study, non-native speakers of English showed relatively larger age-related detriments on the speech-in-noise tasks.…”

“…A total of 3836 United States SMs (546 female, 3290 male) between the ages of 18-57 years (mean (SD) = 28.4 (7.28)) were recruited for this study. Participants were selected based on the same hearing criteria used in Phillips et al (2024): pure tone thresholds 25 dB HL or better at 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz in each ear and pure-tone average (PTA) across 3, 4, and 6 kHz less than or equal to 15 dB HL in the better ear, to provide additional control of potential differences in the audibility of high-frequency energy that may affect speech intelligibility (Monson et al, 2014).…”

“…Recognizing speech in the presence of background noise (SiN) is one domain in which bilinguals often show disadvantages compared to monolinguals (for summaries, see Cowan et al, 2022;von Hapsburg & Peña, 2002). The magnitude of the bilingual SiN disadvantage may be modulated by stimulus characteristics, such as the presence of semantic or syntactic context cues, which monolinguals can better leverage to overcome acoustic degradations (Lucks Mendel & Widner, 2016;Skoe & Karayanidi, 2019), and the presence of additional acoustic degradations such as time compression and reverberation, which may exacerbate bilingual difficulties (Phillips et al, 2024;Rogers et al, 2006). In addition, there is extensive evidence that many individual factors influence the magnitude or even the presence of this effect, such as the age when acquisition of the target language began (Regalado et al, 2019;Shi, 2009;Shi & Sánchez, 2010), language proficiency (Kilman et al, 2014;Rimikis et al, 2013) and relative dominance (Cowan et al, 2023;Regalado et al, 2019;Shi & Sánchez, 2010), degree of foreign accent (Shi, 2012), cumulative exposure (Shi, 2009), and current language use patterns (Suite et al, 2023).…”

“…However, it is of interest to examine the effects of AoA and current language use on SiN recognition in adults across the age range. There is evidence to suggest that aging has a differential impact on English speech-in-noise recognition in adults who identify as non-native speakers of English, as compared to native speakers of English (Phillips et al, 2024). In this prior study, US Service members (SMs) aged 18-60 years who responded "No" to the question: "Do you consider English to be your native language?"…”