Masking level differences for tones and speech in elderly listeners with relatively normal audiograms

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Psychoacoustics
• Gerontology

Background:

• Difficulties in understanding speech in noisy environments are common in elderly individuals.
• Binaural hearing, crucial for speech perception in noise, may be affected by aging.
• Investigating central auditory function is key to understanding age-related hearing deficits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare masking level difference (MLD) performance between elderly and young adults with normal hearing.
• To determine if reduced binaural processing contributes to speech-in-noise difficulties in the elderly.
• To attribute any MLD changes to central auditory effects by excluding peripheral hearing loss.

Main Methods:

• Measured MLD for 500-Hz tone detection and spondee word recognition.
• Utilized two listener groups: elderly (normal hearing) and young (normal hearing) controls.
• Focused on the NoS pi condition to assess binaural unmasking.

Main Results:

• Elderly listeners demonstrated poorer MLD performance than young listeners.
• This deficit was most pronounced in the NoS pi condition for both tone and speech tasks.
• Normal audiometric sensitivity was confirmed in the elderly group.

Conclusions:

• Elderly listeners exhibit reduced binaural masking level difference, even with normal peripheral hearing.
• Central auditory processing, specifically binaural unmasking, appears to be affected by aging.
• These findings suggest a potential neural basis for speech-in-noise difficulties in the elderly.