Limitations of Analysis of Covariance Designs in Aging Research

Martin, Douglas R.; Ellsworth, Randy; Cranford, Jerry L.

doi:10.1097/00003446-199102000-00011

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…As it is clear from this diagram, age is connected to PC via two different causal paths: a direct one (age → PC) and an indirect one (age → PTA → PC). In other words, researchers investigating aging effects in sensorineural hearing loss have to deal with the methodological issue that factors age and peripheral hearing loss covary to a large extent (Martin et al, 1991). One solution for studying the specific effects of variables that are impossible to manipulate experimentally is statistical control, combined with a careful examination of the possible dependencies in the data to avoid introducing spurious associations by controlling for a collider.…”

Section: Causal Inference Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of Age-Related and Audibility-Related Deficits to Aided Consonant Identification in Presbycusis: A Causal-Inference Analysis

Varnet

Léger

Boucher

et al. 2021

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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The decline of speech intelligibility in presbycusis can be regarded as resulting from the combined contribution of two main groups of factors: (1) audibility-related factors and (2) age-related factors. In particular, there is now an abundant scientific literature on the crucial role of suprathreshold auditory abilities and cognitive functions, which have been found to decline with age even in the absence of audiometric hearing loss. However, researchers investigating the direct effect of aging in presbycusis have to deal with the methodological issue that age and peripheral hearing loss covary to a large extent. In the present study, we analyzed a dataset of consonant-identification scores measured in quiet and in noise for a large cohort (n = 459, age = 42–92) of hearing-impaired (HI) and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. HI listeners were provided with a frequency-dependent amplification adjusted to their audiometric profile. Their scores in the two conditions were predicted from their pure-tone average (PTA) and age, as well as from their Extended Speech Intelligibility Index (ESII), a measure of the impact of audibility loss on speech intelligibility. We relied on a causal-inference approach combined with Bayesian modeling to disentangle the direct causal effects of age and audibility on intelligibility from the indirect effect of age on hearing loss. The analysis revealed that the direct effect of PTA on HI intelligibility scores was 5 times higher than the effect of age. This overwhelming effect of PTA was not due to a residual audibility loss despite amplification, as confirmed by a ESII-based model. More plausibly, the marginal role of age could be a consequence of the relatively little cognitively-demanding task used in this study. Furthermore, the amount of variance in intelligibility scores was smaller for NH than HI listeners, even after accounting for age and audibility, reflecting the presence of additional suprathreshold deficits in the latter group. Although the non-sense-syllable materials and the particular amplification settings used in this study potentially restrict the generalization of the findings, we think that these promising results call for a wider use of causal-inference analysis in audiology, e.g., as a way to disentangle the influence of the various cognitive factors and suprathreshold deficits associated to presbycusis.

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Section: Causal Inference Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of Age-Related and Audibility-Related Deficits to Aided Consonant Identification in Presbycusis: A Causal-Inference Analysis

Varnet

Léger

Boucher

et al. 2021

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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“…Others have attempted to minimize the effects of threshold elevation by comparing young and older participants with hearing impairment but with similar thresholds (Kelly-Ballweber & Dobie, 1984) or by comparing older, hearing-impaired participants with young participants tested in the presence of a masker that elevates the young participants' thresholds to levels that are equivalent to those of the older participants with hearing loss (e.g., Dubno & Schaefer, 1992). In contrast, Martin, Ellsworth, and Cranford (1991) posited that choosing participants with normal thresholds compared to young participants results in data that are not representative of the older population. This review takes the position that it is critical to understand the role of threshold elevation on agerelated changes in presbyacusis in order to determine what changes are truly age related.…”

Section: Aging and Threshold Elevationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Presbyacusis and the Auditory Brainstem Response

Boettcher

2002

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Age-related hearing loss (ARHL or presbyacusis) is an increasingly common form of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) as a result of changing demographics, and the auditory brainstem response (ABR) is a common experimental and clinical tool in audiology and neurology. Some of the changes that occur in the aging auditory system may significantly influence the interpretation of the ABR in comparison to the ABRs of younger adults. The approach of this review will be to integrate physiological and histopathological data from human and animal studies to provide a better understanding of the array of age-related changes in the ABR and to determine how age-related changes in the auditory system may influence how the ABR should be interpreted in presbyacusis. Data will be described in terms of thresholds, latencies, and amplitudes, as well as more complex auditory functions such as masking and temporal processing. Included in the review of data will be an attempt to differentiate between age-related effects that may strictly be due to threshold elevation from those that may be due to the aging process.

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“…None of these approaches controls for possible “central effects of peripheral pathology” (Willott, 1996 ) in the older participants, i.e., physiological and anatomical changes in the central auditory system induced by peripheral pathology (Robertson and Irvine, 1989 ; Ison et al, 2010 ). The approach using mathematical adjustments has the additional disadvantage that, since age and audiometric thresholds are not statistically independent, partialling out the effect of hearing sensitivity also removes some of the age effect, resulting in an underestimation of the effect of the latter (Martin et al, 1991 ). In the present study, the older participants were selected to have hearing sensitivity matching that of a YNH control group over a wide frequency range and in both ears.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition

Füllgrabe

Moore

Stone

2015

Front. Aging Neurosci.

367

472

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Hearing loss with increasing age adversely affects the ability to understand speech, an effect that results partly from reduced audibility. The aims of this study were to establish whether aging reduces speech intelligibility for listeners with normal audiograms, and, if so, to assess the relative contributions of auditory temporal and cognitive processing. Twenty-one older normal-hearing (ONH; 60–79 years) participants with bilateral audiometric thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL at 0.125–6 kHz were matched to nine young (YNH; 18–27 years) participants in terms of mean audiograms, years of education, and performance IQ. Measures included: (1) identification of consonants in quiet and in noise that was unmodulated or modulated at 5 or 80 Hz; (2) identification of sentences in quiet and in co-located or spatially separated two-talker babble; (3) detection of modulation of the temporal envelope (TE) at frequencies 5–180 Hz; (4) monaural and binaural sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS); (5) various cognitive tests. Speech identification was worse for ONH than YNH participants in all types of background. This deficit was not reflected in self-ratings of hearing ability. Modulation masking release (the improvement in speech identification obtained by amplitude modulating a noise background) and spatial masking release (the benefit obtained from spatially separating masker and target speech) were not affected by age. Sensitivity to TE and TFS was lower for ONH than YNH participants, and was correlated positively with speech-in-noise (SiN) identification. Many cognitive abilities were lower for ONH than YNH participants, and generally were correlated positively with SiN identification scores. The best predictors of the intelligibility of SiN were composite measures of cognition and TFS sensitivity. These results suggest that declines in speech perception in older persons are partly caused by cognitive and perceptual changes separate from age-related changes in audiometric sensitivity.

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Limitations of Analysis of Covariance Designs in Aging Research

Cited by 12 publications

References 4 publications

Contributions of Age-Related and Audibility-Related Deficits to Aided Consonant Identification in Presbycusis: A Causal-Inference Analysis

Contributions of Age-Related and Audibility-Related Deficits to Aided Consonant Identification in Presbycusis: A Causal-Inference Analysis

Presbyacusis and the Auditory Brainstem Response

Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition

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