Halling D C, Humes L E
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2000 Apr;43(2):414-31. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4302.414.
Elderly listeners have been shown to experience greater difficulty with speech understanding than young listeners. The greater difficulty with speech understanding in elderly listeners has been attributed, primarily, to their typical high-frequency sensorineural hearing impairment. However, not all of the observed difficulty can be accounted for by hearing thresholds, leaving the likelihood of additional suprathreshold processing deficits. This study investigates speech understanding in older people and the relative contributions of hearing threshold and age to speech understanding. Considering that temporal processing is thought to affect speech understanding, the study also assesses the contributions of hearing loss and age to modulation-preservation performance. Finally, individual differences in hearing loss, age, and modulation-preservation performance are examined to see if they are closely associated with individual differences in speech-recognition ability, especially among older listeners. The results of the study suggest that hearing loss is closely tied to both speech-recognition performance and to measures of modulation preservation. Although some of the analyses at first indicated an effect of age, it was shown that this could be attributed in part to slight elevations in hearing threshold. Finally, it was shown that individual differences in hearing loss and measures of modulation preservation and processing efficiency in noise are associated with speech-recognition performance and that, given these measures, speech recognition can be predicted quite accurately.
研究表明，与年轻听众相比，老年听众在言语理解方面存在更大困难。老年听众言语理解困难加剧，主要归因于他们典型的高频感音神经性听力损失。然而，并非所有观察到的困难都可以用听力阈值来解释，这就意味着存在额外的阈上加工缺陷的可能性。本研究调查了老年人的言语理解情况，以及听力阈值和年龄对言语理解的相对贡献。鉴于时间加工被认为会影响言语理解，该研究还评估了听力损失和年龄对调制保持能力的贡献。最后，研究了听力损失、年龄和调制保持能力方面的个体差异，以确定它们是否与言语识别能力的个体差异密切相关，尤其是在老年听众中。研究结果表明，听力损失与言语识别表现和调制保持能力指标密切相关。虽然一些分析最初表明年龄有影响，但结果显示这部分可归因于听力阈值的轻微升高。最后，研究表明听力损失的个体差异以及噪声环境下调制保持能力和加工效率的指标与言语识别表现相关，并且基于这些指标，可以相当准确地预测言语识别能力。
