Lash Amanda, Rogers Chad S, Zoller Amy, Wingfield Arthur
Department of Psychology and Volen National Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454-9110, USA.
Exp Aging Res. 2013;39(3):235-53. doi: 10.1080/0361073X.2013.779175.
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Older adults, especially those with reduced hearing acuity, can make good use of linguistic context in word recognition. Less is known about the effects of the weighted distribution of probable target and nontarget words that fit the sentence context (response entropy). The present study examined the effects of age, hearing acuity, linguistic context, and response entropy on spoken word recognition.
Participants were 18 older adults with good hearing acuity (M age = 74.3 years), 18 older adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss (M age = 76.1 years), and 18 young adults with age-normal hearing (M age = 19.6 years). Participants heard sentence-final words using a word-onset gating paradigm, in which words were heard with increasing amounts of onset information until they could be correctly identified. Degrees of context varied from a neutral context to a high context condition.
Older adults with poor hearing acuity required a greater amount of word onset information for recognition of words when heard in a neutral context compared with older adults with good hearing acuity and young adults. This difference progressively decreased with an increase in words' contextual probability. Unlike the young adults, both older adult groups' word recognition thresholds were sensitive to response entropy. Response entropy was not affected by hearing acuity.
Increasing linguistic context mitigates the negative effect of age and hearing loss on word recognition. The effect of response entropy on older adults' word recognition is discussed in terms of an age-related inhibition deficit.
背景/研究背景：老年人，尤其是那些听力敏锐度下降的人，能够很好地利用语言语境进行单词识别。对于符合句子语境的可能目标词和非目标词的加权分布（反应熵）的影响，人们了解得较少。本研究考察了年龄、听力敏锐度、语言语境和反应熵对口语单词识别的影响。
参与者包括18名听力敏锐度良好的老年人（平均年龄 = 74.3岁）、18名轻度至中度听力损失的老年人（平均年龄 = 76.1岁）和18名听力正常的年轻人（平均年龄 = 19.6岁）。参与者使用单词起始选通范式听取句子末尾的单词，在该范式中，随着起始信息的增加，单词被逐渐听到，直到能够被正确识别。语境程度从中性语境到高语境条件不等。
与听力敏锐度良好的老年人和年轻人相比，听力敏锐度较差的老年人在中性语境中听到单词时，识别单词需要更多的单词起始信息。随着单词语境概率的增加，这种差异逐渐减小。与年轻人不同，两个老年人群体的单词识别阈值对反应熵敏感。反应熵不受听力敏锐度的影响。
增加语言语境可减轻年龄和听力损失对单词识别的负面影响。从与年龄相关的抑制缺陷角度讨论了反应熵对老年人单词识别的影响。
