Aging and the Perception of Temporally Interleaved Words

Stimulus and listener factors affecting age-related changes in competing speech perception

“…Moreover, high-frequency hearing loss was related to three out of the four cognitive variables. Among the middle-aged and older adults, working memory (as measured by the LNSe task) was not associated with competing speech perception, consistent with findings from several studies (Desjardins and Dougherty, 2013;Helfer et al, 2013;Humes and Coughlin, 2009;Humes et al, 2006;Woods et al, 2013) but at odds with a number of others (Anderson et al, 2013;Koelewijn et al, 2012;Neher et al, 2012). It is likely that differences in the specific tests used to measure working memory contributed to this variability in results.…”

“…The specific cognitive tests were selected based on past research identifying associations of each measure with speech understanding in adverse and/or complex listening conditions. For example, a number of studies have found that auditory working and/or short-term memory is related to speech perception within a competing speech background (e.g., Akeroyd, 2008;Anderson et al, 2013;Helfer et al, 2013;Humes et al, 2006). Performance on processing speed tasks also is associated with competing speech perception (Tun and Wingfield, 1999;Tun et al, 2002;Desjardins and Dougherty, 2013;Woods et al, 2013) and inhibitory ability as measured by the Stroop task has been shown to be related to older adults' performance on a single-talker interference task (Jesse and Janse, 2012).…”

“…Nevertheless, other data from our lab using tasks that minimize the effect of energetic masking support the idea that older listeners experience greater lexical interference from a single-talker masker. Helfer et al (2013) used a temporally interleaved sentence task which essentially eliminated energetic masking. Although younger and older adults performed similarly on trials with no interleaved words, older adults were at a substantial disadvantage when they had to ignore the intervening speech.…”

Lexical influences on competing speech perception in younger, middle-aged, and older adults

“…Hence, listeners who could ignore the masker speech stream or re-direct their attention back to the target speech if distracted by the masker coped better in this single-talker competing speech situation. This strongly supports the contention that while age-related hearing loss undoubtedly limits speech recognition, changes in higher-level abilities also contribute, as found in a growing body of previous work (e.g., Anderson et al, 2013;Desjardins and Dougherty 2013;Helfer et al, 2013;Humes et al, 2006;Jesse and Janse, 2012;Tun and Wingfield, 1999;Tun et al, 2002).…”

“…Each participant completed standard pure-tone audiometric testing, tympanometry, and a battery of tests that measured cognitive skills that may play a role in speech understanding (e.g., Akeroyd, 2008;Anderson et al, 2013;Helfer et al, 2013;Helfer and Freyman, 2014;Humes et al, 2006;Tun and Wingfield, 1999;Tun et al, 2002;Desjardins and Dougherty 2013;Woods et al, 2013). The older and middle-aged participants completed these initial tests in one visit and the speech recognition assessment in a second visit.…”