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An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
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Age Affects Speech Understanding and Multitask Costs.

Annelies Devesse1, Jan Wouters, Astrid van Wieringen

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Middle-aged adults show poorer speech understanding and require more cognitive resources for challenging listening tasks compared to younger adults, as demonstrated by the Audiovisual True-to-Life Assessment of Auditory Rehabilitation (AVATAR) paradigm.

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Area of Science:

  • Auditory Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Gerontology

Background:

  • Age-related changes in auditory processing can impact speech understanding, especially in noisy environments.
  • Cognitive resources, including attention and working memory, are crucial for effective listening.
  • The Audiovisual True-to-Life Assessment of Auditory Rehabilitation (AVATAR) paradigm offers an ecologically relevant method to study these effects.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of age on speech understanding in noise.
  • To assess the cognitive costs associated with complex listening situations in middle-aged versus young adults.
  • To evaluate self-reported listening difficulties and concentration demands across age groups.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the AVATAR paradigm with normal-hearing middle-aged and young adults.
  • Employed a combined auditory-visual speech-in-noise task with secondary tasks (auditory localization, visual short-term memory).
  • Assessed performance decrements in secondary tasks as a measure of cognitive resource allocation during listening.

Main Results:

  • Middle-aged adults exhibited significantly worse performance on speech understanding compared to young adults.
  • In more demanding multitask conditions (triple and quadruple tasks), middle-aged adults showed greater decrements in secondary task performance.
  • Middle-aged participants reported increased daily listening concentration demands and greater speech understanding difficulties.

Conclusions:

  • Age adversely affects speech-in-noise understanding.
  • Older adults allocate more cognitive resources to overcome challenging listening situations.
  • The AVATAR paradigm effectively demonstrates age-related declines in auditory and cognitive functions during complex auditory tasks.