Factors Affecting Speech Understanding in Older Adults

How age and hearing loss affect the perception of interrupted speech may vary based on both the physical properties of preserved or obliterated speech fragments and individual listener characteristics. To investigate perceptual processes and interruption parameters influencing intelligibility across interruption rates, participants of different age and hearing status heard sentences interrupted by silence at either a single primary rate (0.5-8 Hz; 25%, 50%, 75% duty cycle) or at an additional concurrent secondary rate (24 Hz; 50% duty cycle). Although age and hearing loss significantly affected intelligibility, the ability to integrate sub-phonemic speech fragments produced by the fast secondary rate was similar in all listener groups. Age and hearing loss interacted with rate with smallest group differences observed at the lowest and highest interruption rates of 0.5 and 24 Hz. Furthermore, intelligibility of dual-rate gated sentences was higher than single-rate gated sentences with the same proportion of retained speech. Correlations of intelligibility of interrupted speech to pure-tone thresholds, age, or measures of working memory and auditory spectro-temporal pattern discrimination were generally low-to-moderate and mostly nonsignificant. These findings demonstrate rate-dependent effects of age and hearing loss on the perception of interrupted speech, suggesting complex interactions of perceptual processes across different time scales.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of age and hearing loss on the intelligibility of interrupted speech

Shafiro

Sheft

Risley

et al. 2015

“…Given the presence of hearing loss in speech-communication circumstances of less than optimal audibility, a better than normal speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) is often required to achieve performance that is similar to that of young normal-hearing adults. 1 Although hearing aids do seem to provide significant and long-term benefits, aided performance often remains less than ideal, especially in the presence of competing speech. Recent work in this laboratory has explored ways to improve the ability of older adults to understand amplified speech for a given SNR.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent work in this laboratory has explored ways to improve the ability of older adults to understand amplified speech for a given SNR. Our focus in previous auditory training studies was placed on a novel approach to intervention which included the following features: (1) it was word based, which placed the focus on meaningful speech rather than on sublexical sounds of speech, such as individual phonemes; (2) it was based on closed-set identification of words under computer control, which enabled automation of presentation, scoring, and feedback; (3) multiple talkers were included in training, which facilitated generalization to novel talkers; (4) it was conducted in noise, the most problematic listening situation for older adults; and (5) both auditory and orthographic feedback associated with the correct and incorrect responses was provided to the listener after incorrect responses. These orthographic representations of the auditory stimulus reinforce the linkage between the acoustic representation of the stimulus in the impaired periphery and the intact representation of the meaningful speech stimulus in the mental lexicon.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of dosage and duration of auditory training for older adults with hearing impairment

Humes

Kinney

Brown

et al. 2014

Self Cite

This study explored a range of training dosages and durations for a word-based auditory-training procedure for older adults with hearing impairment. Three groups received a different “dose”: 2x/week; 3x/week; no training. Fifteen training sessions comprised a “cycle” which was repeated three times for each dosage. Groups that completed training performed significantly better than controls for speech-in-noise materials included in the training regimen, with no significant difference observed between the 2x or 3x/week training groups. Based on these results, as well as prior literature on learning theory, training 2x or 3x/week for 5–15 weeks appears to be sufficient to yield training benefits with this training regimen.

“…Most of the speech understanding problems of older listeners can be explained by reduced audibility of speech as a result of agerelated hearing loss ͑Humes and Dubno, 2009͒. Part of the problem, however, also appears to be related to deficits in auditory temporal processing, which affect the ability of older normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners to understand temporally altered speech ͑Gordon-Salant and Fitzgibbons, 1993͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition of accented English in quiet by younger normal-hearing listeners and older listeners with normal-hearing and hearing loss

Gordon‐Salant

Yeni‐Komshian

Fitzgibbons

2010

This investigation examined the effects of listener age and hearing loss on recognition of accented speech. Speech materials were isolated English words and sentences that featured phonemes that are often mispronounced by non-native speakers of English whose first language is Spanish. These stimuli were recorded by a native speaker of English and two non-native speakers of English: one with a mild accent and one with a moderate accent. The stimuli were presented in quiet to younger and older adults with normal-hearing and older adults with hearing loss. Analysis of percent correct recognition scores showed that all listeners performed more poorly with increasing accent, and older listeners with hearing loss performed more poorly than the younger and older normal-hearing listeners in all accent conditions. Context and age effects were minimal. Consonant confusion patterns in the moderate accent condition showed that error patterns of all listeners reflected temporal alterations with accented speech, with major errors of word-final consonant voicing in stops and fricatives, and word-initial fricatives.