Extended high-frequency hearing and cognitive-motor coordination during speech-in-noise walking

Human speech perception in everyday environments requires continuous coordination between auditory processing, predictive cognition, and motor control. Although extended high-frequency (EHF) hearing sensitivity has been associated with rapid speech-in-noise perception, little is known about whether subtle EHF variability relates to cognitive-motor performance during concurrent locomotion and listening. This cross-sectional laboratory study examined whether EHF hearing sensitivity was associated with predictive speech recognition and gait stability during dual-task walking under noisy listening conditions. Forty-eight young adults with clinically normal conventional audiograms (0.25-8 kHz < 20 dB HL) completed EHF audiometric testing between 9 and 16 kHz, followed by a dual-task experiment integrating treadmill walking with an auditory gating paradigm. Participants listened to naturally coarticulated fricative-onset Mandarin words embedded in spatially diffuse multitalker noise while walking at preferred and increased walking speeds. Speech stimuli were presented in progressively increasing temporal gates to assess predictive spoken-word recognition from partial acoustic input. Simultaneously, wearable inertial motion sensors recorded stride variability, trunk stability, and dual-task locomotor performance during auditory processing. Results showed that lower EHF thresholds were associated with higher predictive speech-recognition accuracy during early gating windows, particularly for fricative stimuli containing greater high-frequency spectral energy. Better EHF sensitivity was also associated with lower gait variability and reduced dual-task interference during noisy walking conditions. In contrast, elevated EHF thresholds were associated with delayed early lexical recognition, greater stride instability, and higher subjective listening effort under increased auditory uncertainty. Associations between EHF sensitivity and gait stability remained significant after controlling for conventional pure-tone averages. These findings suggest that EHF hearing sensitivity may be associated with auditory-cognitive-motor functioning during dynamic listening situations. Better EHF sensitivity was associated with greater early-gate recognition accuracy and lower gait variability, consistent with a possible shared auditory-cognitive-motor mechanism. The study extends current research on EHF hearing by integrating auditory psychophysics with cognitive-motor assessment. It highlights the potential relevance of EHF sensitivity for understanding subtle individual differences in speech perception and mobility-related listening performance.