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Experimental Methods to Study Human Postural Control
Published on: September 11, 2019
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Postural Control While Listening in Younger and Middle-Aged Adults
Karen S Helfer1, Richard L Freyman1, Richard van Emmerik2
1Department of Communication Disorders, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
Ear and Hearing
|March 10, 2020
Summary
Challenging listening conditions negatively impact balance, especially in middle-aged adults. Increased listening effort in noisy environments may reduce resources for maintaining postural control as people age.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Human Factors Engineering
- Gerontology
Background:
- Listening effort increases with acoustic challenge.
- Aging can affect sensory and motor functions.
- Dual-task paradigms assess cognitive and physical resource allocation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if a listening-while-balancing task quantifies listening effort in middle-aged adults.
- To determine if challenging acoustic conditions impact postural control more in middle-aged than younger adults.
Main Methods:
- A dual-task paradigm combined speech perception with postural control on a force platform.
- Participants repeated sentences amidst speech or noise maskers.
- Subjective listening effort was rated post-task.
Main Results:
- Poorer postural control occurred under more adverse signal-to-noise ratios for both age groups.
- High-frequency hearing loss correlated with poorer balance in dual-task conditions.
- Middle-aged adults showed greater dual-task costs with speech maskers and higher reported listening effort.
Conclusions:
- Listening in challenging acoustic environments impairs postural control, particularly in middle-aged individuals.
- Increased listening effort may deplete resources needed for balance, especially with aging.
- This dual-task paradigm can quantify the costs of speech understanding in adverse conditions.
