Nagaraj Naveen K
Cognitive Hearing Science Lab, Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences/University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Oct 17;60(10):2949-2964. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-H-17-0022.
This study examined the relationship between working memory (WM) and speech comprehension in older adults with hearing impairment (HI). It was hypothesized that WM would explain significant variance in speech comprehension measured in multitalker babble (MTB).
Twenty-four older (59-73 years) adults with sensorineural HI participated. WM capacity (WMC) was measured using 3 complex span tasks. Speech comprehension was assessed using multiple passages, and speech identification ability was measured using recall of sentence final-word and key words. Speech measures were performed in quiet and in the presence of MTB at + 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio.
Results suggested that participants' speech identification was poorer in MTB, but their ability to comprehend discourse in MTB was at least as good as in quiet. WMC did not explain significant variance in speech comprehension before and after controlling for age and audibility. However, WMC explained significant variance in low-context sentence key words identification in MTB.
These results suggest that WMC plays an important role in identifying low-context sentences in MTB, but not when comprehending semantically rich discourse passages. In general, data did not support individual variability in WMC as a factor that predicts speech comprehension ability in older adults with HI.
本研究探讨了听力受损（HI）老年人的工作记忆（WM）与言语理解之间的关系。研究假设工作记忆将解释在多说话者嘈杂声（MTB）中测量的言语理解的显著差异。
24名年龄较大（59 - 73岁）的感音神经性听力受损成年人参与了研究。使用3项复杂跨度任务测量工作记忆容量（WMC）。使用多篇文章评估言语理解，并使用句子末单词和关键词的回忆来测量言语识别能力。言语测量在安静环境中以及在信噪比为 + 5 dB的MTB环境中进行。
结果表明，参与者在MTB中的言语识别较差，但他们在MTB中理解话语的能力至少与在安静环境中一样好。在控制年龄和可听度之前和之后，WMC均未解释言语理解的显著差异。然而，WMC解释了MTB中低语境句子关键词识别的显著差异。
这些结果表明，WMC在MTB中识别低语境句子时起重要作用，但在理解语义丰富的话语段落时并非如此。总体而言，数据不支持WMC的个体差异作为预测HI老年人言语理解能力的一个因素。
