Spatial release from informational masking declines with age: Evidence from a detection task in a virtual separation paradigm

Abstract

Declines in spatial release from informational masking may contribute to the speech-processing difficulties that older adults often experience within complex listening environments. The present study sought to answer two fundamental questions: (1) Does spatial release from informational masking decline with age and, if so, (2) does age predict this decline independently of age-typical hearing loss? Younger (18–34 years) and older (60–80 years) adults with age-typical hearing completed a yes/no target-detection task with low-pass filtered noise-vocoded speech designed to reduce non-spatial segregation cues and control for hearing loss. Participants detected a target voice among two-talker masking babble while a virtual spatial separation paradigm [Freyman, Helfer, McCall, and Clifton, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106(6), 3578–3588 (1999)] was used to isolate informational masking release. The younger and older adults both exhibited spatial release from informational masking, but masking release was reduced among the older adults. Furthermore, age predicted this decline controlling for hearing loss, while there was no indication that hearing loss played a role. These findings provide evidence that declines specific to aging limit spatial release from informational masking under challenging listening conditions.

Tinnitus impairs segregation of competing speech in normal-hearing listeners

“…According to Kidd et al 37 , talker sex differences allow for a release from informational masking. The addition of spatial cues may enhance talker sex cues, allowing for greater release from informational masking 40,41 . It is unclear why tinnitus severity was unrelated to utilization of spatial cues to segregate competing speech in the present study.…”

School-age children benefit from voice gender cue differences for the perception of speech in competing speech

“…Spatial differences and speech onset asynchrony are strong cues for speech stream segregation in adult listeners (Freyman et al, 2001;Kidd et al, 2005;Lee and Humes, 2012;Zobel et al, 2019). Another cue that particularly improves speech stream segregation in competing speech maskers is differences in speakers' voice characteristics (Bird and Darwin, 1998;Broadbent, 1952;Brungart, 2001;Helfer and Freyman, 2009;Zekveld et al, 2014).…”

Working-Memory, Alpha-Theta Oscillations and Musical Training in Older Age: Research Perspectives for Speech-on-speech Perception

“…Since speech-on-speech perception relies in part on parsing target and masker streams based on the spectrotemporal acoustic cues, e.g., pitch contours, common onset and offset, common modulations, voicing, and similar ( Bregman, 1990 ), presbycusis could have a negative effect by potentially altering these cues. However, even when hearing loss is minimized, speech-on-speech perception has been shown to be difficult in middle-aged ( Başkent et al, 2014 ) and older individuals ( Zobel et al, 2019 ).…”