Zhao Xinxian, Li Yang, Yang Xiaohu
School of Foreign Studies, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China.
School of Foreign Studies, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China.
J Commun Disord. 2024 Sep-Oct;111:106451. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2024.106451. Epub 2024 Jul 14.
Older adults experiencing normal aging make up most patients seeking services at audiology clinics. While research acknowledges that the speech perception abilities of aging adults can be diminished in lower-level speech identification or discrimination, there is less concern about how aging affects higher-level speech understanding, particularly in tonal languages. This study aimed to explore the effects of aging on the comprehension of implied intentions conveyed through prosodic features in Mandarin focus sentences, both in quiet and noisy environments.
Twenty-seven younger listeners (aged 17 to 26) and 27 older listeners (aged 58 to 77) participated in a focus comprehension task. Their task was to interpret SAVO (subject-adverbial-verb-object) sentences with five focus conditions (initial subject-focus, medial adverbial-focus, medial verb-focus, final object-focus, and neutral non-focus) across five background conditions: quiet, white noise (at 0 and -10-dB signal-to-noise ratios, SNRs), and competing speech (at 0 and -10-dB SNRs). Comprehension performances were analyzed based on accuracy rates, and underlying processing patterns were evaluated using confusion matrices.
Younger listeners consistently excelled across focus conditions in quiet settings, but their scores declined in white noise at the SNR of -10-dB. Older adults exhibited variability in scores across focus conditions but not in background conditions. They scored lower than their younger counterparts, with the highest scores observed in the comprehension of sentences featuring a medial adverbial-focus. Analysis of confusion matrices revealed that younger adults seldom mistook focus conditions, whereas older adults tended to comprehend the other focused items as medial adverbials.
Older listeners' performance reflects their over-reliance on top-down language knowledge, while their bottom-up acoustic processing decreases when interpreting Mandarin focus sentences. These findings provide evidence of active cognitive processing in prosody comprehension among aging adults and offer insights for diagnosing and intervening with speech disorders in clinical settings.
在听力诊所寻求服务的大多数患者是经历正常衰老的老年人。虽然研究承认，老年人的言语感知能力在较低水平的言语识别或辨别方面可能会下降，但对于衰老如何影响更高水平的言语理解，尤其是在声调语言中，人们关注较少。本研究旨在探讨衰老对在安静和嘈杂环境中通过普通话焦点句的韵律特征传达的隐含意图理解的影响。
27名年轻听众（年龄在17至26岁之间）和27名年长听众（年龄在58至77岁之间）参与了一项焦点理解任务。他们的任务是在五种背景条件下解释具有五种焦点条件（句首主语焦点、句中状语焦点、句中动词焦点、句末宾语焦点和中性非焦点）的“主-状-动-宾”（SAVO）句子：安静、白噪声（信噪比为0和-10分贝）以及竞争言语（信噪比为0和-10分贝）。基于准确率分析理解表现，并使用混淆矩阵评估潜在的处理模式。
年轻听众在安静环境中的所有焦点条件下始终表现出色，但在信噪比为-10分贝的白噪声中分数下降。年长成年人在不同焦点条件下的分数存在差异，但在背景条件下没有差异。他们的得分低于年轻听众，在理解具有句中状语焦点的句子时得分最高。对混淆矩阵的分析表明，年轻成年人很少误判焦点条件，而年长成年人倾向于将其他焦点项目理解为句中状语。
年长听众的表现反映了他们对自上而下语言知识的过度依赖，而在解释普通话焦点句时，他们自下而上的声学处理能力下降。这些发现为老年人韵律理解中的主动认知处理提供了证据，并为临床环境中言语障碍的诊断和干预提供了见解。
