Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults

Neger, Thordis Marisa; Rietveld, Toni; Janse, Esther

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00628

Cited by 36 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…This is perhaps unsurprising, as these were the factors that had mixed results in regards to their role in perceptual learning. Our results are in line with the findings of Neger et al (2014), who also found no effect of working memory on perceptual learning in older adults. It is possible that hearing sensitivity still plays a role in the differences we see between our age groups, given that the older adults do have a significantly higher PTA than the younger adults (although both groups are still within the normal range).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

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The Role of Lexical Status and Individual Differences for Perceptual Learning in Younger and Older Adults

Colby

Clayards

Baum

2018

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Perceptual learning in younger and older adults 2 Abstract Purpose: This study examined whether older adults remain perceptually flexible when presented with ambiguities in speech in the absence of lexically disambiguating information. We expected older adults to show less perceptual learning when top-down information was not available. We also investigated whether individual differences in executive function predicted perceptual learning in older and younger adults.Method: Younger (n=31) and older adults (n=27) completed two perceptual learning tasks comprised of a pretest, exposure, and posttest phase. Both learning tasks exposed participants to clear and ambiguous speech tokens, but crucially, the lexically-guided learning task provided disambiguating lexical information, while the distributional learning task did not. Participants also performed several cognitive tasks to investigate individual differences in working memory, vocabulary, and attention-switching control. Results:We found that perceptual learning is maintained in older adults, but that learning may be stronger in contexts where top-down information is available. Receptive vocabulary scores predicted learning across both age groups and in both learning tasks.Conclusions: Implicit learning is maintained with age across different learning conditions, but remains stronger when lexically biasing information is available. We find that receptive vocabulary is relevant for learning in both types of learning tasks, suggesting the importance of vocabulary knowledge for adapting to ambiguities in speech.Perceptual learning in younger and older adults 3

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

“…Lists started at two digits in length and end at eight, with two different lists per length for 16 trials total. Each digit was visually presented for 1000 ms. Digit span was calculated as the proportion of correctly reported sequences (Neger et al, 2014). The digit span task took approximately 5 minutes.…”

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Lexical Status and Individual Differences for Perceptual Learning in Younger and Older Adults

Colby

Clayards

Baum

2018

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…The study by Neger et al (2014) employed a very similar approach and used tests for working memory, processing speed and attention switching control. In contrast to Neger et al (2014), we additionally included tests for the perception of visually degraded speech, lexical abilities and verbal memory as well as a working memory task with distracting information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contribution of Cognitive Factors to Individual Differences in Understanding Noise-Vocoded Speech in Young and Older Adults

Rosemann

Gießing

Özyurt

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Noise-vocoded speech is commonly used to simulate the sensation after cochlear implantation as it consists of spectrally degraded speech. High individual variability exists in learning to understand both noise-vocoded speech and speech perceived through a cochlear implant (CI). This variability is partly ascribed to differing cognitive abilities like working memory, verbal skills or attention. Although clinically highly relevant, up to now, no consensus has been achieved about which cognitive factors exactly predict the intelligibility of speech in noise-vocoded situations in healthy subjects or in patients after cochlear implantation. We aimed to establish a test battery that can be used to predict speech understanding in patients prior to receiving a CI. Young and old healthy listeners completed a noise-vocoded speech test in addition to cognitive tests tapping on verbal memory, working memory, lexicon and retrieval skills as well as cognitive flexibility and attention. Partial-least-squares analysis revealed that six variables were important to significantly predict vocoded-speech performance. These were the ability to perceive visually degraded speech tested by the Text Reception Threshold, vocabulary size assessed with the Multiple Choice Word Test, working memory gauged with the Operation Span Test, verbal learning and recall of the Verbal Learning and Retention Test and task switching abilities tested by the Comprehensive Trail-Making Test. Thus, these cognitive abilities explain individual differences in noise-vocoded speech understanding and should be considered when aiming to predict hearing-aid outcome.

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“…Many participants in our study experienced some degree of hearing loss (be it slight), and were, therefore, exposed to a degraded speech signal. Previous research has shown that linguistic experience such as higher vocabulary knowledge facilitates the processing of degraded speech (Janse and Adank, 2012;McAuliffe et al, 2013;Neger et al, 2014) and that this effect is not influenced by word frequency (McAuliffe et al, 2013). In therapy settings, it may thus be beneficial for patients with poorer language proficiency to start with discrimination tasks with simple stimuli (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, most older adults listen to a partially degraded auditory signal as they experience agerelated hearing loss. Vocabulary knowledge has been shown to support comprehension of degraded speech such as dysarthric (McAuliffe et al, 2013), noisevocoded (Neger et al, 2014) or accented (Janse and Adank, 2012) speech. Consequently, more cognitive resources might be available to perform the second subtask of stimuli comparison, which is essential for auditory discrimination.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlates of older adults’ discrimination of acoustic properties in speech

Neger

Janse

Rietveld

2014

Speech, Language and Hearing

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Auditory discrimination of speech stimuli is an essential tool in speech and language therapy, for example, in dysarthria rehabilitation. It is unclear, however, which listener characteristics are associated with the ability to perceive differences between one's own utterance and target speech. Knowledge about such associations may help to support patients participating in speech and language therapy programs that involve auditory discrimination tasks. Discrimination performance was evaluated in 96 healthy participants over 60 years of age as individuals with dysarthria are typically in this age group. Participants compared meaningful words and sentences on the dimensions of loudness, pitch, and speech rate. Auditory abilities were assessed using pure-tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and speech understanding in noise. Cognitive measures included auditory short-term memory, working memory, and processing speed. Linguistic functioning was assessed by means of vocabulary knowledge and language proficiency. Exploratory factor analyses showed that discrimination performance was primarily associated with cognitive and linguistic skills, rather than auditory abilities. Accordingly, older adults' discrimination performance was mainly predicted by cognitive and linguistic skills. Discrimination accuracy was higher in older adults with better speech understanding in noise, faster processing speed, and better language proficiency, but accuracy decreased with age. This raises the question whether these associations generalize to clinical populations and, if so, whether patients with better cognitive or linguistic skills may benefit more from discriminationbased therapeutic approaches than patients with poorer cognitive or linguistic abilities.

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Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults

Cited by 36 publications

References 80 publications

The Role of Lexical Status and Individual Differences for Perceptual Learning in Younger and Older Adults

The Role of Lexical Status and Individual Differences for Perceptual Learning in Younger and Older Adults

The Contribution of Cognitive Factors to Individual Differences in Understanding Noise-Vocoded Speech in Young and Older Adults

Correlates of older adults’ discrimination of acoustic properties in speech

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