Cervera Teresa C, Soler Maria J, Dasi Carmen, Ruiz Juan C
University of Valencia, Spain.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2009 Sep;63(3):216-26. doi: 10.1037/a0014321.
Young normal-hearing listeners and young-elderly listeners between 55 and 65 years of age, ranging from near-normal hearing to moderate hearing loss, were compared using different speech recognition tasks (consonant recognition in quiet and in noise, and time-compressed sentences) and working memory tasks (serial word recall and digit ordering). The results showed that the group of young-elderly listeners performed worse on both the speech recognition and working memory tasks than the young listeners. However, when pure-tone audiometric thresholds were used as a covariate variable, the significant differences between groups disappeared. These results support the hypothesis that sensory decline in young-elderly listeners seems to be an important factor in explaining the decrease in speech processing and working memory capacity observed at these ages.
研究比较了年轻的听力正常者以及年龄在55至65岁之间、听力从接近正常到中度听力损失的年轻老年人，使用了不同的言语识别任务（安静和噪声环境下的辅音识别以及时间压缩句子）和工作记忆任务（系列单词回忆和数字排序）。结果显示，年轻老年人组在言语识别和工作记忆任务上的表现均比年轻听众差。然而，当将纯音听力阈值用作协变量时，两组之间的显著差异消失了。这些结果支持了这样一种假设，即年轻老年人的感觉衰退似乎是解释在这些年龄段观察到的言语处理和工作记忆能力下降的一个重要因素。
