van Rooij J C, Plomp R, Orlebeke J F
Department of Otolaryngology, Free University Hospital, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Acoust Soc Am. 1989 Oct;86(4):1294-309. doi: 10.1121/1.398744.
This study compares performance of 24 young normal-hearing (aged 18-28 years) and 24 elderly (aged 61-85 years) listeners on auditive (sensitivity, frequency selectivity, and temporal resolution), cognitive (memory performance, processing speed, and divided attention ability), and speech perception tests (at the phoneme, spondee, and sentence level). Its principal aim is to assess whether the tests selected yield meaningful results. The results obtained will be used to reduce the test battery in order to be manageable in a second study on a much larger number of elderly listeners. The relationships between the tests are explored by multivariate statistical methods. The results show that: (a) in young listeners, individual differences in speech perception performance are remarkably small resulting in low correlations between the tests, while in the elderly tests of phoneme, spondee, and sentence perception overlap considerably; (b) speech perception in the elderly seems to be largely determined by hearing loss at the higher frequencies, whereas the effects of other auditive and cognitive factors seem to be relatively small or absent; and (c) performance in the elderly is only partly correlated with age.
本研究比较了24名年轻听力正常者（年龄在18至28岁之间）和24名老年人（年龄在61至85岁之间）在听觉（敏感度、频率选择性和时间分辨率）、认知（记忆表现、处理速度和注意力分配能力）以及言语感知测试（在音素、单音节词和句子层面）中的表现。其主要目的是评估所选用的测试是否能得出有意义的结果。所得结果将用于精简测试组合，以便在针对更多老年听众的第二项研究中便于管理。通过多变量统计方法探究各项测试之间的关系。结果表明：（a）在年轻听众中，言语感知表现的个体差异非常小，导致各项测试之间的相关性较低，而在老年人中，音素、单音节词和句子感知测试有相当大的重叠；（b）老年人的言语感知似乎在很大程度上由高频听力损失决定，而其他听觉和认知因素的影响似乎相对较小或不存在；（c）老年人的表现仅部分与年龄相关。
