Humes Larry E, Kewley-Port Diane, Fogerty Daniel, Kinney Dana
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405-7002, USA.
Hear Res. 2010 Jun 1;264(1-2):30-40. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2009.09.010. Epub 2009 Sep 26.
Psychophysical data on hearing sensitivity and various measures of supra-threshold auditory temporal processing are presented for large groups of young (18-35 y), middle-aged (40-55 y) and older (60-89 y) adults. Hearing thresholds were measured at 500, 1414 and 4000 Hz. Measures of temporal processing included gap-detection thresholds for bands of noise centered at 1000 and 3500 Hz, stimulus onset asynchronies for monaural and dichotic temporal-order identification for brief vowels, and stimulus onset/offset asynchronies for the monaural temporal masking of vowel identification. For all temporal-processing measures, the impact of high-frequency hearing loss in older adults was minimized by a combination of low-pass filtering the stimuli and use of high presentation levels. The performance of the older adults was worse than that of the young adults on all measures except gap-detection threshold at 1000 Hz. Middle-aged adults performed significantly worse than the young adults on measures of threshold sensitivity and three of the four measures of temporal-order identification, but not for any of the measures of temporal masking. Individual differences are also examined among a group of 124 older adults. Cognition and age were found to be significant predictors, although only 10-27% of the variance could be accounted for by these predictors.
本文给出了大量年轻（18 - 35岁）、中年（40 - 55岁）和老年（60 - 89岁）成年人的听力敏感度心理物理学数据以及超阈值听觉时间处理的各种测量结果。在500、1414和4000赫兹频率下测量听力阈值。时间处理的测量包括以1000和3500赫兹为中心的噪声带的间隙检测阈值、单耳和双耳短暂元音时间顺序识别的刺激起始异步性，以及元音识别单耳时间掩蔽的刺激起始/偏移异步性。对于所有时间处理测量，通过对刺激进行低通滤波和使用高呈现水平相结合的方式，将老年人高频听力损失的影响降至最低。除了1000赫兹的间隙检测阈值外，老年人在所有测量上的表现均比年轻人差。中年成年人在阈值敏感度测量以及四个时间顺序识别测量中的三个测量上的表现明显比年轻人差，但在任何时间掩蔽测量上均无差异。还对一组124名老年人的个体差异进行了研究。发现认知和年龄是显著的预测因素，尽管这些预测因素仅能解释10 - 27%的方差。
