Helfer Karen S, Merchant Gabrielle R, Wasiuk Peter A
Department of Communication Disorders, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Oct 17;60(10):3009-3018. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-H-17-0030.
A frequent complaint by older adults is difficulty communicating in challenging acoustic environments. The purpose of this work was to review and summarize information about how speech perception in complex listening situations changes across the adult age range.
This article provides a review of age-related changes in speech understanding in complex listening environments and summarizes results from several studies conducted in our laboratory.
Both degree of high frequency hearing loss and cognitive test performance limit individuals' ability to understand speech in difficult listening situations as they age. The performance of middle-aged adults is similar to that of younger adults in the presence of noise maskers, but they experience substantially more difficulty when the masker is 1 or 2 competing speech messages. For the most part, middle-aged participants in studies conducted in our laboratory reported as much self-perceived hearing problems as did older adult participants.
Research supports the multifactorial nature of listening in real-world environments. Current audiologic assessment practices are often insufficient to identify the true speech understanding struggles that individuals experience in these situations. This points to the importance of giving weight to patients' self-reported difficulties.
老年人经常抱怨在具有挑战性的声学环境中交流困难。这项工作的目的是回顾和总结关于在整个成年年龄范围内复杂听力情况下言语感知如何变化的信息。
本文回顾了复杂听力环境中与年龄相关的言语理解变化，并总结了在我们实验室进行的几项研究的结果。
随着年龄增长，高频听力损失程度和认知测试表现都会限制个体在困难听力情况下理解言语的能力。在存在噪声掩蔽器的情况下，中年成年人的表现与年轻成年人相似，但当掩蔽器是1或2条竞争性言语信息时，他们会遇到更多困难。在我们实验室进行的研究中，大多数中年参与者报告的自我感知听力问题与老年参与者一样多。
研究支持现实世界环境中听力的多因素性质。当前的听力评估实践往往不足以识别个体在这些情况下真正的言语理解困难。这表明重视患者自我报告的困难的重要性。
