AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN THE PERCEPTION OF SPEECH

目前的研究将检查可能与年龄相关的认知变化 几种不同年龄被试的言语知觉能力 语言层次。这包括分段中的听觉/语音处理 动态声学的识别与识别、处理 元音感知中的线索和单词中自上而下的过程 承认。将在每个实验中进行几个不同的实验 在这三个主题领域中。因为听力敏感度的变化几乎是 不可避免地与年龄因素有关，实验设计将 (1)包括年长和年轻的个人对听力损失的控制 对他们的年龄至少表现出“正常”听力敏感度的人 群体；(2)包括年长的和年轻的表现相同的个人 听力损失的范围；以及(3)使用适当的统计方法 在确定是否和年龄相关时控制听力灵敏度 效果是存在的。要解决的基本问题包括 以下是：在衰老过程中有没有听觉/语音记忆的变化 能与听力敏感度改变分开吗？有没有与年龄有关的 个体处理快速变化的声音的语音处理方式的变化 信息(如共振峰频率)以产生元音 身份证明？年龄较大的人是否更多(或更少)地使用 在单词识别中的自上而下的信息比年轻的听众更多吗？这个 我们的实验结果将从以下两个方面进行评估 相关老龄化文献及相关言语理论模型 制作和单词识别。这些数据应该允许更准确的 对衰老过程和言语类型的总体理解 尤其是老年人可能面临的处理困难。

The present study will examine possible age-related cognitive changes in the speech perception abilities of older subjects at several different linguistic levels. These include auditory/phonetic processing in segment identification and discrimination, the processing of dynamic acoustic cues in the perception of vowels, and top-down processes in word recognition. Several different experiments will be conducted within each of these three topic areas. Since hearing sensitivity changes are almost inevitably associated with the age factor, the experimental design will control for hearing loss by (1) including older and younger individuals who demonstrate at least "normal" hearing sensitivity for their age group; (2) including both older and younger individuals who show the same range of hearing loss; and (3) using appropriate statistical methods to control for hearing sensitivity while determining if and age-related effect is present. The basic questions to be addressed include the following: Are there auditory/phonetic memory changes in aging which are separable from hearing sensitivity changes? Are there age-related changes in how individuals phonetically process rapidly changing acoustic information (such as formant frequencies) in order to make vowel identifications? Do older individuals make greater (or lesser) use of top-down information in word recognition than do younger listeners? The results of our experiments will be evaluated in terms of both the relevant aging literature and the relevant theoretical models of speech production and word recognition. These data should allow a more accurate understanding of the aging process, in general, and the types of speech processing difficulties the older individual may face, in particular.