How Spoken Language Comprehension is Achieved by Older Listeners in Difficult Listening Situations

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Older adults experience greater difficulty comprehending speech in noisy environments compared to younger adults.
• Age-related declines in auditory, cognitive, or linguistic processes may underlie these challenges.
• Listening difficulties may force older adults to alter their speech processing strategies, shifting the balance between bottom-up and top-down processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review studies on age-related differences in speech comprehension, particularly in lectures and conversations.
• To investigate the relationship between individual differences in lexical knowledge, reading comprehension, and speech comprehension across age groups.
• To understand how listening difficulty and age interact with cognitive and linguistic abilities.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review of studies examining age effects on monologue and dialogue comprehension.
• Analysis of the correlation between vocabulary and reading comprehension skills with listening comprehension.
• Evaluation of comprehension through multiple-choice questions assessing content recall.

Main Results:

• Age-related differences in speech comprehension diminished when individual differences in speech recognition in noise were accounted for.
• Younger listeners showed greater benefit from spatial separation of sound sources than older listeners.
• Vocabulary knowledge predicted comprehension in difficult listening conditions for both age groups, while reading comprehension's role varied with listening difficulty and age.

Conclusions:

• Age-related auditory declines are a primary cause of speech comprehension difficulties in older adults.
• Auditory declines and listening difficulty influence the engagement of linguistic and cognitive abilities in challenging listening situations.
• When speech recognition is impaired, older adults may prioritize lexical access, limiting resources for higher-order cognitive processing needed for comprehension.