van Knijff Eline C, Coene Martine, Govaerts Paul J
Language and Hearing Center Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The Eargroup, Antwerp, Belgium.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2018 May;53(3):628-642. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12376. Epub 2018 Feb 15.
Previous research has suggested that speech perception in elderly adults is influenced not only by age-related hearing loss or presbycusis but also by declines in cognitive abilities, by background noise and by the syntactic complexity of the message.
To gain further insight into the influence of these cognitive as well as acoustic and linguistic factors on speech perception in elderly adults by investigating inhibitory control as a listener characteristic and background noise type and syntactic complexity as input characteristics.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: Phoneme identification was measured in different noise conditions and in different linguistic contexts (single words, sentences with varying syntactic complexity). Additionally, inhibitory control was measured using a visual stimulus-response matching task. Fifty-one adults participated in this study, including elderly adults with age-related hearing loss (n = 9) and with normal hearing (n = 17), and a control group of normal hearing younger adults (n = 25).
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The analysis revealed that elderly adults with normal hearing and with hearing loss were less likely to identify successfully phonemes in single words than younger normal hearing controls. In the context of sentences, only elderly adults with hearing loss had a lower odds of correct phoneme perception than the control group. Additionally, in elderly adults with hearing loss, phoneme-in-sentence perception was linked to age-related declines in inhibitory control. In all participants, phoneme identification in sentences was influenced by both noise type and syntactic complexity.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Inhibitory control and syntactic complexity might play a significant role in speech perception, especially in elderly listeners. These factors might also influence the results of clinical assessments of speech perception. Testing procedures thus need to be selected and their results interpreted carefully with these influences in mind.
先前的研究表明，老年人的言语感知不仅受到与年龄相关的听力损失或老年性耳聋的影响，还受到认知能力下降、背景噪音以及信息句法复杂性的影响。
通过将抑制控制作为听者特征、背景噪音类型和句法复杂性作为输入特征进行研究，进一步了解这些认知、声学和语言因素对老年人言语感知的影响。
在不同的噪音条件和不同的语言环境（单个单词、句法复杂性不同的句子）下测量音素识别。此外，使用视觉刺激-反应匹配任务测量抑制控制。51名成年人参与了这项研究，包括患有与年龄相关听力损失的老年人（n = 9）和听力正常的老年人（n = 17），以及一组听力正常的年轻成年人对照组（n = 25）。
分析显示，听力正常和有听力损失的老年人比听力正常的年轻对照组更不容易成功识别单个单词中的音素。在句子环境中，只有有听力损失的老年人正确感知音素的几率低于对照组。此外，在有听力损失的老年人中，句子中的音素感知与与年龄相关的抑制控制下降有关。在所有参与者中，句子中的音素识别受到噪音类型和句法复杂性的影响。
抑制控制和句法复杂性可能在言语感知中起重要作用，尤其是在老年听者中。这些因素也可能影响言语感知临床评估的结果。因此，在选择测试程序时需要考虑这些影响，并谨慎解释其结果。
