Speech Perception in Older Listeners with Normal Hearing:Conditions of Time Alteration, Selective Word Stress, and Length of Sentences

Abstract

Background and ObjectivesDeficits of the aging auditory system negatively affect older listeners in terms of speech communication, resulting in limitations to their social lives. To improve their perceptual skills, the goal of this study was to investigate the effects of time alteration, selective word stress, and varying sentence lengths on the speech perception of older listeners.Subjects and MethodsSeventeen older people with normal hearing were tested for seven conditions of different time-altered sentences (i.e., ±60%, ±40%, ±20%, 0%), two conditions of selective word stress (i.e., no-stress and stress), and three different lengths of sentences (i.e., short, medium, and long) at the most comfortable level for individuals in quiet circumstances.ResultsAs time compression increased, sentence perception scores decreased statistically. Compared to a natural (or no stress) condition, the selectively stressed words significantly improved the perceptual scores of these older listeners. Long sentences yielded the worst scores under all time-altered conditions. Interestingly, there was a noticeable positive effect for the selective word stress at the 20% time compression.ConclusionsThis pattern of results suggests that a combination of time compression and selective word stress is more effective for understanding speech in older listeners than using the time-expanded condition only.

Development of the Hearing Rehabilitation for Older Adults (HeRO) Healthcare Mobile Application and Its Likely Utility for Elderly Users

“…Remarkably, the frequency ranges of hearing loss spread into the middle and lower frequencies with age, simultaneously affecting central auditory processing [10]. As a result, ARHL makes it difficult for older adults to detect and understand certain consonants [11], recognize some sentences [12], and understand fast-rate speech [13], but they can benefit from selective stress on speech [14], which suggests that the elderly require specialized auditory training. In Borella and colleagues' memory training study, 40 older adults underwent various types of working memory tasks, including forward and backward digit span training for two weeks.…”