Gap detection and the precedence effect in young and old adults

Abstract

Thresholds for detecting a gap between two Gaussian-enveloped (standard deviation = 0.5 ms), 2-kHz tones were determined in young and old listeners. The gap-detection thresholds of old adults were more variable and about twice as large as those obtained from young adults. Moreover, gap-detection thresholds were not correlated with audiometric thresholds in either group. Estimates of the width of the temporal window of young subjects, based on the detection of a gap between two tone pips, were smaller than those typically obtained when a relatively long duration pure tone is interrupted [Moore et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 1266-1275 (1989)]. Because the amount of time it takes to recover from an adapting stimulus is likely to affect gap detection thresholds [Glasberg et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, 1546-1556 (1987)], smaller estimates of temporal window size would be expected in this paradigm if the amount of adaptation produced by the first tone pip was negligible. The larger gap-detection thresholds of old subjects indicate that they may have larger temporal windows than young subjects. The lack of correlation between audiometric and gap-detection thresholds indicates that this loss of temporal acuity is not related to the degree of sensorineural hearing loss. In a second experiment on the precedence effect using the same subjects, a Gaussian-enveloped tone was presented over earphones to the left ear followed by the same tone pip presented to the right ear. To more realistically approximate a sound field situation, the tone pip presented to each ear was followed 0.6 ms later by an attenuated version presented to the contralateral ear. The delay between the left- and right-ear tone-pips was varied and the transition point between hearing a single tone on the left, and hearing two such sounds in close succession (one coming from the left and the other from the right) was determined. The transition point in this experiment did not differ between young and old subjects nor were these transition points correlated with gap-detection thresholds. These results indicate that monaural temporal acuity and binaural echo suppression may be based on different processes.

Aging and Speech-on-Speech Masking

“…A question that must be addressed is whether age-or hearing-lossrelated changes influenced our subjects' ability to exploit the precedence effect, as past research suggests that certain aspects of the precedence effect may be impacted negatively by aging. Specifically, performance on tasks that measure the effect of an echo on localization judgments (e.g., Cranford, Andres, Piatz, & Reissig, 1993;Cranford, Boose, & Moore, 1990;Cranford & Romereim, 1992) seems to be influenced by age, whereas studies examining echo thresholds (e.g., Roberts, Besing, & Koehnke, 2002;Schneider, Pichora-Fuller, Kowalchuk, & Lamb, 1994) show only weak effects of senescence. The present data suggest little evidence of a decline in the precedence effect in our older subjects.…”

Age-Related Changes in the Relationship Between Auditory Brainstem Responses and Envelope-Following Responses

“…Elderly listeners with normal hearing thresholds still have deficits in complex temporal processing tasks (Dubno et al 1984;Schneider et al 1994;Snell and Frisina 2000;Mazelova et al 2002;Ruggles et al 2011). Among listeners with matched thresholds, the actual amplitudes of the ABR waves are significantly lower with age (Boettcher et al 1993;Konrad-Martin et al 2012).…”

Perception of Across-Frequency Asynchrony by Listeners with Cochlear Hearing Loss

“…However, the HI listeners in this study were on average older than the NH listeners in the study by Wojtczak et al (2012) used as a control group. A large number of studies have reported clear effects of age on gap detection and gap-duration discrimination for both within-channel and across-channel markers (Fitzgibbons and Gordon-Salant 1994;Schneider et al 1994;He et al 1999;Lister et al 2000Lister et al , 2002Lister and Roberts 2005). Since the NH and HI listeners compared in this study were not age-matched, some of the observed differences between their data may reflect poorer coding of temporal information or a reduced ability to integrate temporal information across frequency due to the age of the HI listeners.…”

“…To our knowledge, no earlier psychophysical study has explicitly addressed the effects of cochlear hearing loss on the perception of across-frequency synchrony, but a number of studies have investigated the effect of hearing loss on performance in tasks involving processing of temporal information both within and across auditory channels. The ability to detect silent gaps within stimuli, regarded as a measure of temporal resolution, has been shown to be generally unaffected by hearing loss especially when differences in stimulus audibility have been eliminated (Moore et al 1989(Moore et al , 1992Schneider et al 1994;Horwitz et al 2011). Temporal modulation transfer functions, regarded as another measure of temporal resolution, measured with tonal carriers, also suggest that HI listeners do not exhibit fundamental deficits in temporal processing (Moore and Glasberg 2001).…”