Recognition of dichotic digits under pre-cued and post-cued response conditions in young and elderly listeners

Dichotic listening was evaluated in pre-cued and post-cued response conditions using a hierarchical set of one-, two- and three-pair dichotic digit materials. Thirty young adults (mean age 29.1 years) with normal hearing, and 30 older adults in the 60-79-year age range (mean age 68.7 years) with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss were evaluated. Several patterns of performance were observed. First, recognition performance in the pre-cued condition was better than recognition performance in the post-cued condition for one-, two- and three-pair digits for both age groups. Second, there was a right ear advantage in pre- and post-cued response conditions for both age groups. In the pre-cued condition, the right ear advantage was small owing to ceiling effects associated with ease of the listening task. In the post-cued condition, recognition performance decreased as a function of age, and left ear scores decreased faster than right ear scores, resulting in a larger right ear advantage in the 60-79-year group. Third, as the complexity of the listening task increased from easy (one-pair) to difficult (three-pairs), there was a corresponding decrease in recognition performance for both age groups. The increase in the difference in performance on easy and difficult tasks became larger as a function of age.