Harada Shinya, Teraoka Ryo, Kuroda Naoki, Teramoto Wataru
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Psychology), Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan.
Graduate School of Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran, Hokkaido, Japan.
Iperception. 2025 Mar 2;16(2):20416695241311206. doi: 10.1177/20416695241311206. eCollection 2025 Mar-Apr.
It is well known that aging affects fundamental perceptual functions. Numerous studies have investigated age-related changes in visual motion perception and demonstrated that aging impairs motion processing. However, limited studies have explored age-related changes in auditory motion perception, and whether aging influences auditory motion perception based on interaural level differences remains unknown. This study examined age-related differences in the discrimination of auditory motion direction based on interaural level differences. We conducted two experiments to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio and motion coherence thresholds required to discriminate auditory motion and visual motion directions, respectively, in younger and older adults. Results showed that age significantly impairs visual motion discrimination; however, it does not impair auditory motion discrimination. These findings suggest that aging does not affect auditory motion perception based on interaural level differences, at least with the broadband noise used in this experiment.
众所周知，衰老会影响基本的感知功能。众多研究已对视觉运动感知中与年龄相关的变化进行了调查，并表明衰老会损害运动处理能力。然而，对听觉运动感知中与年龄相关变化的研究有限，基于双耳水平差异衰老是否会影响听觉运动感知仍不清楚。本研究考察了基于双耳水平差异的听觉运动方向辨别中的年龄相关差异。我们进行了两项实验，分别估计年轻和年长成年人辨别听觉运动和视觉运动方向所需的信噪比和运动连贯性阈值。结果表明，年龄显著损害视觉运动辨别能力；然而，它并不损害听觉运动辨别能力。这些发现表明，至少在本实验所使用的宽带噪声条件下，衰老不会基于双耳水平差异影响听觉运动感知。
