Grose John H, Hall Joseph W, Buss Emily
Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7070, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2006 Apr;119(4):2305-15. doi: 10.1121/1.2172169.
This study tested the hypothesis that temporal processing deficits are evident in the pre-senescent (middle-aged) auditory system for listening tasks that involve brief stimuli, across-frequency-channel processing, and/or significant processing loads. A gap duration discrimination (GDD) task was employed that used either fixed-duration gap markers (experiment 1) or random-duration markers (experiment 2). Independent variables included standard gap duration (0, 35, and 250 ms), marker frequency (within- and across-frequency), and task complexity. A total of 18 young and 23 middle-aged listeners with normal hearing participated in the GDD experiments. Middle age was defined operationally as 40-55 years of age. The results indicated that middle-aged listeners performed more poorly than the young listeners in general, and that this deficit was sometimes, but not always, exacerbated by increases in task complexity. A third experiment employed a categorical perception task that measured the gap duration associated with a perceptual boundary. The results from 12 young and 12 middle-aged listeners with normal hearing indicated that the categorical boundary was associated with shorter gaps in the young listeners. The results of these experiments indicate that temporal processing deficits can be observed relatively early in the aging process, and are evident in middle age.
对于涉及短暂刺激、跨频率通道处理和/或显著处理负荷的听力任务，衰老前（中年）听觉系统中存在明显的时间处理缺陷。采用了间隙持续时间辨别（GDD）任务，该任务使用固定持续时间的间隙标记（实验1）或随机持续时间的标记（实验2）。自变量包括标准间隙持续时间（0、35和250毫秒）、标记频率（频率内和跨频率）以及任务复杂性。共有18名听力正常的年轻听众和23名中年听众参与了GDD实验。中年在操作上定义为40至55岁。结果表明，中年听众总体上比年轻听众表现更差，并且这种缺陷有时（但并非总是）会因任务复杂性的增加而加剧。第三个实验采用了类别感知任务，该任务测量与感知边界相关的间隙持续时间。12名听力正常的年轻听众和12名中年听众的结果表明，年轻听众的类别边界与更短的间隙相关。这些实验结果表明，时间处理缺陷在衰老过程中相对较早出现，并且在中年时明显。
