Divenyi P L, Haupt K M
Speech and Hearing Research Facility, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Martinez, California, USA.
Ear Hear. 1997 Apr;18(2):100-13. doi: 10.1097/00003446-199704000-00002.
The study was conducted to determine the relationship between measures of auditory performance in elderly individuals. Specifically, its goal was to uncover a set of measures correlated with the set of measures of speech understanding under specific conditions of interference to gain a better understanding of decline of the "cocktail party effect" in aging.
Audiological status and auditory performance of a group of elderly (60- to 81-yr-old) individuals were determined through a test battery. When present, the hearing loss of elderly subjects was symmetrical in the two ears and, at most, moderate. The battery included tests of speech intelligibility on the word and sentence levels, with and without the presence of interfering speech. In addition pure-tone and speech reception thresholds, perception of spectrally or temporally distorted speech and auditory resolution of frequency, time, and space were tested. Two tests received special consideration: the Speech Perception In Noise Test and the Modified Rhyme Reverberation Test.
Results indicated that, despite the nearly normal hearing levels that characterized much of the subject group, auditory sensitivity measures showed persistent correlation to all other measures, with the exception of auditory resolution regarding frequency, time, and space. As a set, sensitivity measures accounted for more than 85% of the variance. When auditory sensitivity was controlled for, other factors underlying speech processing in the presence of interfering stimuli were uncovered, factors most likely related to the ability to perceptually segregate one speech signal from another.
The findings suggest that, to determine the relationship between audiological/auditory test results of an elderly population, it is important to remove the effects of hearing loss through appropriate statistical methods.
开展这项研究以确定老年个体听觉表现指标之间的关系。具体而言，其目标是在特定干扰条件下，找出一组与言语理解指标相关的指标，以便更好地理解衰老过程中“鸡尾酒会效应”的衰退情况。
通过一套测试确定一组老年人（60至81岁）的听力学状况和听觉表现。老年受试者若存在听力损失，双耳对称，且至多为中度。该套测试包括在有和没有干扰言语情况下的单词和句子层面的言语可懂度测试。此外，还测试了纯音和言语接受阈值、频谱或时间失真言语的感知以及频率、时间和空间的听觉分辨率。两项测试得到特别关注：噪声中的言语感知测试和改良韵律混响测试。
结果表明，尽管该受试者群体大部分人的听力水平接近正常，但听觉敏感度指标与所有其他指标持续相关，频率、时间和空间方面的听觉分辨率除外。作为一个整体，敏感度指标占方差的85%以上。在控制听觉敏感度后，发现了干扰刺激存在时言语处理的其他潜在因素，这些因素很可能与从另一个言语信号中感知分离出一个言语信号的能力有关。
研究结果表明，为确定老年人群体听力学/听觉测试结果之间的关系，通过适当的统计方法消除听力损失的影响很重要。
