van Rooij J C, Plomp R
ENT Department, Free University Hospital, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Acta Otolaryngol Suppl. 1990;476:177-81. doi: 10.3109/00016489109127275.
A key issue in research on speech perception in the elderly is whether the difficulties in understanding speech are caused by auditive and/or cognitive factors. Resolving this issue is not only scientific interest but has many practical, i.e. diagnostic and rehabilitative, implications as well. We developed a test battery comprising auditive (sensitivity, frequency selectivity and temporal resolution), cognitive (memory performance, processing speed and intellectual abilities), and speech perception tests (at the phoneme, spondee and sentence level). This test battery was administered to 72 elderly subjects (aged 60 to 93 years). The results show that the deterioration of speech perception in the elderly consists of two statistically independent components (a) a large component mainly representing the progressive high-frequency hearing loss with age which accounts for approximately two-thirds of the systematic variance of the tests of speech perception, and (b) a smaller component (accounting for one-third of the systematic variance of the speech perception tests) mainly representing a general performance decrement due to reduced mental efficiency, which is indicated by a general slowing of performance and a reduced memory capacity. Although both components are correlated with age, it was found that the balance between auditive and cognitive contributions to speech perception performance did not change with age.
老年人言语感知研究中的一个关键问题是，言语理解困难是由听觉因素和/或认知因素引起的。解决这个问题不仅具有科学价值，而且在诊断和康复等诸多实际应用方面也具有重要意义。我们开发了一套测试组合，包括听觉测试（灵敏度、频率选择性和时间分辨率）、认知测试（记忆表现、处理速度和智力能力）以及言语感知测试（音素、扬扬格词和句子水平）。该测试组合应用于72名老年受试者（年龄在60至93岁之间）。结果表明，老年人言语感知能力的衰退由两个在统计学上相互独立的部分组成：（a）一个主要部分主要代表随着年龄增长而出现的渐进性高频听力损失，约占言语感知测试系统方差的三分之二；（b）一个较小的部分（占言语感知测试系统方差的三分之一）主要代表由于心理效率降低导致的总体表现下降，表现为表现普遍变慢和记忆能力下降。尽管这两个部分都与年龄相关，但研究发现，听觉和认知因素对言语感知表现的贡献比例不会随着年龄的增长而改变。
