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An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
Spatial Hearing and Aging Effects on Mandarin Focus Comprehension in Complex Listening Environments.
Yuxia Wang1,2, Xinran Du1,2, Xinxian Zhao1,2
1Speech-Language-Hearing Center, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
Summary
Older adults can still comprehend speech in noisy environments, benefiting from spatial cues. While overall accuracy decreases with age, the advantage of spatial release from masking (SRM) for understanding prosody remains. This highlights the importance of spatial hearing in aging.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Psychoacoustics
- Speech processing
Background:
- Aging impacts speech comprehension, particularly in complex auditory environments.
- Prosodic focus cues are crucial for understanding meaning in speech.
- Spatial separation of sound sources can aid speech perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in Mandarin prosodic focus comprehension.
- To determine if postfocus compression (PFC) and spatial separation of speech and noise aid older listeners.
- To compare the effectiveness of these cues in younger and older adults within complex listening environments.
Main Methods:
- Twenty younger and 20 older Mandarin listeners performed focus comprehension tasks.
- Stimuli included five focus types with varying prosodic patterns.
- Tasks were conducted in quiet and with noise at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and spatial configurations (colocated vs. separated).
- Accuracy, spatial release from masking (SRM), and confusion patterns were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Younger listeners achieved higher overall accuracy (93.6%) than older listeners (55.5%).
- Older listeners performed better with PFC cues (IF, MF1, MF2) compared to non-PFC cues (FF, NF).
- Performance deficits due to noise were more pronounced in colocated conditions.
- The relative benefits of SRM were comparable between age groups, especially at -10 dB SNR.
Conclusions:
- Postfocus compression (PFC) is a robust cue for focus comprehension, even in aging listeners.
- While absolute performance declines with age, the relative benefit of spatial release from masking (SRM) for prosodic processing is preserved.
- Spatial cues are vital for interventions addressing age-related communication difficulties.
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