Temporal factors and speech recognition performance in young and elderly listeners

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Gerontology
• Speech Science

Background:

• Elderly listeners often exhibit deficits in speech recognition, particularly when auditory signals are degraded.
• Temporal waveform distortion is a common challenge in real-world listening environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the independent and combined effects of age and hearing loss on speech recognition in the presence of temporal distortion.
• To explore the role of auditory temporal processing abilities in speech recognition deficits among older adults.

Main Methods:

• Evaluated young and elderly listeners with normal and impaired hearing.
• Presented low-predictability sentences (Revised Speech Perception in Noise test) with time compression, reverberation, and interruption.
• Assessed auditory temporal processing using duration discrimination and gap detection tasks.

Main Results:

• Age and hearing impairment independently contributed to deficits in recognizing temporally distorted speech.
• Auditory temporal processing, specifically gap duration discrimination, correlated with the ability to recognize reverberant speech.
• Age-related factors beyond peripheral hearing loss were identified as contributors to speech recognition difficulties.

Conclusions:

• Diminished speech recognition in elderly listeners is influenced by age-related factors beyond peripheral hearing loss.
• Auditory temporal processing abilities play a role in understanding distorted speech, especially in reverberant conditions.
• Interventions targeting temporal processing may benefit elderly individuals with speech recognition challenges.