Dubno J R, Lee F S, Matthews L J, Mills J H
Department of Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1997 Apr;40(2):444-52. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4002.444.
Previous studies of older listeners suggest age-related declines in speech recognition. However, the interpretation of these results is not straightforward because auditory thresholds, which account for the largest proportion of the variance in speech-recognition scores, also vary considerably with age. Here, effects of age, gender, and auditory thresholds on several measures of speech recognition were assessed for a large sample of individuals enrolled in a longitudinal study of age-related hearing loss. Participants ranged in age from 55-84 years. They were evaluated with a battery of conventional audiometric measures and speech-recognition materials, including NU-6 monosyllabic words, Synthetic Sentence Identification sentences, and high-context and low-context sentences from the Speech Perception in Noise test. Two analyses were conducted to assure that changes in speech-recognition scores with age were examined independently of age-related changes in auditory thresholds. In the first analysis, no significant differences in speech recognition were observed for individuals in three age groups (55-64, 65-74, 75-84 years) who were selected so that average puretone thresholds for the groups were within 5 dB. In the second analysis, using partial correlations to adjust both score and age for their association with average thresholds, significant declines with age were observed for males in maximum word recognition, maximum synthetic sentence identification, and keyword recognition in high-context sentences. For females, no significant changes in speech recognition with age were observed for any test.
以往针对老年听众的研究表明，语音识别能力会随着年龄增长而下降。然而，这些结果的解读并非简单直接，因为在语音识别分数方差中占比最大的听觉阈值也会随年龄有显著变化。在此，针对参与一项与年龄相关听力损失纵向研究的大量个体样本，评估了年龄、性别和听觉阈值对多种语音识别指标的影响。参与者年龄范围在55至84岁之间。他们接受了一系列传统听力测定指标和语音识别材料的评估，包括NU - 6单音节词、合成句子识别句，以及来自噪声环境下语音感知测试的高语境和低语境句子。进行了两项分析，以确保在不考虑与年龄相关的听觉阈值变化的情况下，研究语音识别分数随年龄的变化。在第一项分析中，对三个年龄组（55 - 64岁、65 - 74岁、75 - 84岁）中平均纯音阈值在5分贝以内的个体进行观察，未发现语音识别存在显著差异。在第二项分析中，使用偏相关来调整分数和年龄与平均阈值的关联，结果发现，在高语境句子的最大单词识别、最大合成句子识别和关键词识别方面，男性的语音识别能力随年龄显著下降。对于女性，在任何测试中均未观察到语音识别能力随年龄有显著变化。
