Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London, WC1N 3PF, UK.
Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 31;14(1):26243. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-77102-5.
Interest in how ageing affects attention is long-standing, although interactions between sensory and attentional processing in older age are not fully understood. Here, we examined interactions between peripheral hearing and selective attention in a spatialised cocktail party listening paradigm, in which three talkers spoke different sentences simultaneously and participants were asked to report the sentence spoken by a talker at a particular location. By comparing a sample of older (N = 61; age = 55-80 years) and younger (N = 58; age = 18-35 years) adults, we show that, as a group, older adults benefit as much as younger adults from preparatory spatial attention. Although, for older adults, this benefit significantly reduces with greater age-related hearing loss. These results demonstrate that older adults with excellent hearing retain the ability to direct spatial selective attention, but this ability deteriorates, in a graded manner, with age-related hearing loss. Thus, reductions in spatial selective attention likely contribute to difficulties communicating in social settings for older adults with age-related hearing loss. Overall, these findings demonstrate a relationship between mild perceptual decline and attention in older age.
人们对衰老如何影响注意力一直很感兴趣，尽管老年人的感觉和注意力处理之间的相互作用还不完全清楚。在这里，我们在一个空间化鸡尾酒会听力范式中研究了外周听力和选择性注意之间的相互作用，在该范式中，三个说话者同时说不同的句子，参与者被要求报告说话者在特定位置所说的句子。通过比较一组年龄较大的（N=61；年龄=55-80 岁）和年龄较小的（N=58；年龄=18-35 岁）成年人，我们表明，作为一个整体，年龄较大的成年人与年龄较小的成年人一样，从预备性空间注意中受益。尽管如此，对于年龄较大的成年人来说，这种益处随着与年龄相关的听力损失的增加而显著减少。这些结果表明，听力良好的老年人大脑仍具有引导空间选择性注意力的能力，但这种能力会随着与年龄相关的听力损失以渐进的方式恶化。因此，空间选择性注意力的下降可能导致与年龄相关的听力损失的老年人在社交环境中交流困难。总的来说，这些发现表明在老年人中，轻度感知衰退与注意力之间存在关系。
