Department of Psychology.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Psychol Aging. 2021 Jun;36(4):504-519. doi: 10.1037/pag0000587. Epub 2021 May 20.
Listening to speech in adverse conditions can be challenging and effortful, especially for older adults. This study examined age-related differences in effortful listening by recording changes in the task-evoked pupil response (TEPR; a physiological marker of listening effort) both at the level of sentence processing and over the entire course of a listening task. A total of 65 (32 young adults, 33 older adults) participants performed a speech recognition task in the presence of a competing talker, while moment-to-moment changes in pupil size were continuously monitored. Participants were also administered the Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale, a questionnaire assessing daily life listening-related fatigue within four domains (social, cognitive, emotional, physical). Normalized TEPRs were overall larger and more steeply rising and falling around the peak in the older versus the young adult group during sentence processing. Additionally, mean TEPRs over the course of the listening task were more stable in the older versus the young adult group, consistent with a more sustained recruitment of compensatory attentional resources to maintain task performance. No age-related differences were found in terms of total daily life listening-related fatigue; however, older adults reported higher scores than young adults within the social domain. Overall, this study provides evidence for qualitatively distinct patterns of physiological arousal between young and older adults consistent with age-related upregulation in resource allocation during listening. A more detailed understanding of age-related changes in the subjective and physiological mechanisms that underlie effortful listening will ultimately help to address complex communication needs in aging listeners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
在不利的条件下听言语可能具有挑战性且需要付出努力，尤其是对于老年人而言。本研究通过记录任务诱发的瞳孔反应（TEPR；一种听努力的生理标志物）在句子处理水平和整个听力任务过程中的变化，来研究与年龄相关的费力听力差异。共有 65 名参与者（32 名年轻成年人，33 名老年成年人）在有竞争说话者的情况下执行言语识别任务，同时连续监测瞳孔大小的瞬间变化。参与者还接受了范德比尔特疲劳量表（Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale）的评估，该量表评估了四个领域（社交、认知、情感、身体）内的日常生活听力相关疲劳。在句子处理过程中，与年轻成年人组相比，老年成年人组的 TEPR 归一化值整体更大，上升和下降更陡峭。此外，与年轻成年人组相比，在听力任务过程中，TEPR 的平均水平更稳定，这与为维持任务表现而更持续地募集补偿性注意力资源一致。在日常生活听力相关总疲劳方面没有发现与年龄相关的差异；然而，老年人在社交领域的得分高于年轻人。总的来说，这项研究为年轻人和老年人之间在生理唤醒方面存在的定性差异提供了证据，这与听力过程中资源分配的年龄相关上调一致。更详细地了解费力听力的主观和生理机制的年龄相关变化，最终将有助于满足老年听力者的复杂沟通需求。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
