Murphy Dana R, Daneman Meredyth, Schneider Bruce A
Biological Communications Systems, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.
Psychol Aging. 2006 Mar;21(1):49-61. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.21.1.49.
Age-related declines in understanding conversation may be largely a consequence of perceptual rather than cognitive declines. B. A. Schneider, M. Daneman, D. R. Murphy, and S. Kwong-See (2000) showed that age-related declines in comprehending single-talker discourse could be eliminated when adjustments were made to compensate for the poorer hearing of older adults. The authors used B. A. Schneider et al.'s methodology to investigate age-related differences in comprehending 2-person conversations. Compensating for hearing difficulties did not eliminate age-related differences when the 2 talkers were spatially separated by 9 degrees or 45 degrees azimuth, but it did when the talkers' contributions came from one central location. These findings suggest that dialogue poses more of a problem for older than for younger adults, not because of the additional cognitive requirements of having to follow 2 talkers rather than 1, but because older adults are not as good as younger adults at making use of the auditory cues that are available for helping listeners perceptually segregate the contributions of 2 spatially separated talkers.
与年龄相关的对话理解能力下降可能主要是感知能力下降而非认知能力下降的结果。B. A. 施奈德、M. 丹曼、D. R. 墨菲和S. 邝西（2000年）表明，当进行调整以补偿老年人较差的听力时，与年龄相关的单说话者话语理解能力下降可以消除。作者采用B. A. 施奈德等人的方法来研究理解两人对话中与年龄相关的差异。当两个说话者在空间上相隔9度或45度方位时，补偿听力困难并不能消除与年龄相关的差异，但当说话者的声音来自一个中心位置时则可以消除。这些发现表明，对话对老年人来说比对年轻人构成的问题更大，不是因为要跟上两个说话者而不是一个说话者需要额外的认知要求，而是因为老年人在利用可帮助听众从感知上区分两个空间上分离的说话者贡献的听觉线索方面不如年轻人。
