Cognitive factors in auditory performance: context, speed of processing, and constraints of memory

This paper describes several techniques used to explore the role of cognitive factors in auditory performance in elderly adults. Two factors, cognitive slowing and age-related memory constraints, receive special attention. Assessing listeners' ability to report the content of time-compressed speech shows elderly adults to be especially vulnerable to rapid speech input. Such effects, however, are ameliorated by effective use of linguistic knowledge, which, unlike processing speed, remains relatively stable in adult aging. A second technique is described in which intelligibility is tested for words excerpted from fluent speech, first presented in isolation and then with varying amounts of preceding or following context from the original utterances. Memory constraints are shown to have a significant effect on elderly listeners' ability to use linguistic context that follows an acoustically ambiguous region for a retrospective analysis of what had been heard. Thus, cognitive factors can both enhance and limit auditory performance in elderly listeners.