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Speech communication in older adults: an acoustic and perceptual investigation

老年人的言语交流：声学和知觉研究

基本信息

批准号：
ES/L007002/1
负责人：
Valerie Hazan
金额：
$ 41.34万
依托单位：
University College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2014
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2014 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL007002%2F1
关键词：
Speech communication older adults acoustic

项目摘要

Speech communication can be difficult for older people, due to the combined effects of age-related hearing loss, which is common over the age of 65, age-related decline in the quality of phonation and speech articulation, and cognitive problems such as poorer short-term memory and processing speed. Past studies of how older individuals perceive and produce speech sounds have tended to consider these abilities independently of each other using controlled materials, such as read words or sentences. These studies tell us little about how older speakers function when using speech for communicative purposes, and how these various factors interact. For example, it has been shown that older people benefit from seeing their interlocutor in conversations, but audiovisual speech places greater demands on cognitive processing than auditory speech which leads to increased listener effort and reduced information recall. In our project, we propose to gain a comprehensive account of older people's speech production and perception in situations involving communication with another individual. Adults with age-related hearing loss and the rarer group of older adults with normal hearing will be included as well as younger adult controls. In Study 1, communication with another speaker, while reading sentences or completing a problem-solving task, will either be in good listening conditions, where both speakers hear each other normally, or in adverse conditions, where the participant has to get their message across to another speaker who has a simulated hearing loss or when both are speaking in a noisy background. These comparisons will enable us to get a sense of the degree to which an older person is able to adapt their speech to overcome difficult listening conditions, a skill which is of paramount importance in speech communication in everyday life. We will obtain high-quality digital recordings of the participants' speech but will also, via sensors placed on the neck, record information about their vocal fold vibration, which determines the quality of their voice. Video recordings will also be analysed to investigate whether older speakers make use of eye gaze and head gestures to signal aspects of discourse such as turn-taking and back-channelling (e.g., saying 'okay' to signal understanding), to the same degree as younger speakers. In Study 2, older and younger listeners with normal and impaired hearing will be presented some of the sentence materials recorded in Study 1 by all speaker groups in good and adverse listening conditions. Tests will be presented in both auditory-alone and audiovisual conditions. Intelligibility tests will be run to see what impact age, hearing status and visual cues have on speech understanding and to see whether the 'clear speech' adaptations made by older speakers to counter the effects of poor communication conditions gives the same benefit to that of younger speakers. Sentence recall tests will also be run to investigate whether the listening effort is reduced listening to 'clear speech'. This project will lead to a better understanding of the effects of ageing on speech communication and of the various contributing factors to potentially degraded speech communication in a population of 'healthy aged' individuals. These benchmarks will be of use for practitioners such as speech and language therapists and audiologists who work on aspects of communication with older people who have health complications. A better understanding of communication difficulties that older individuals experience and of their strategies to overcome these difficulties will also assist professionals such as social workers and care professionals who work to improve quality of life for older people, as well as developers of speech technology devices for telemedicine and remote monitoring. Importantly, this research will also contribute to our basic understanding of speech perception and production development across the lifespan.

由于年龄相关的听力损失（65 岁以上常见）、年龄相关的发声和言语清晰度下降以及短期记忆和处理速度较差等认知问题的综合影响，老年人的言语交流可能会很困难。过去对老年人如何感知和产生语音的研究倾向于使用受控材料（例如阅读单词或句子）来独立地考虑这些能力。这些研究几乎没有告诉我们老年说话者在使用语音进行交流时如何发挥作用，以及这些不同因素如何相互作用。例如，研究表明，老年人在对话中看到对话者会受益匪浅，但视听语音对认知处理的要求比听觉语音更高，这会导致听者付出更大的努力并减少信息回忆。在我们的项目中，我们建议全面了解老年人在与他人交流的情况下的言语产生和感知。患有与年龄相关的听力损失的成年人和极少数听力正常的老年人以及较年轻的成年人对照组将被包括在内。在研究 1 中，在阅读句子或完成解决问题的任务时与另一位说话者进行交流，要么处于良好的听力条件下，即两个说话者都能正常听到对方的声音，要么处于不利的条件下，即参与者必须将自己的信息传达给另一个模拟听力损失的说话者，或者两人都在嘈杂的背景下说话。这些比较将使我们了解老年人能够在多大程度上调整自己的言语以克服困难的听力条件，这一技能在日常生活中的言语交流中至关重要。我们将获得参与者语音的高质量数字录音，但还将通过放置在颈部的传感器记录有关他们声带振动的信息，这决定了他们的声音质量。还将分析视频记录，以调查年长说话者是否与年轻说话者一样，利用眼神和头部姿势来发出话语方面的信号，例如轮流和反向引导（例如，说“好”以表示理解）。在研究 2 中，听力正常和受损的年长和年轻听众将看到研究 1 中所有说话者组在良好和不利听力条件下录制的一些句子材料。测试将在纯听觉和视听条件下进行。将进行清晰度测试，以了解年龄、听力状况和视觉提示对语音理解的影响，并了解年长说话者为应对不良沟通条件的影响而进行的“清晰语音”调整是否对年轻说话者有同样的好处。还将进行句子回忆测试，以调查听“清晰语音”时的听力努力是否减少。该项目将有助于更好地了解衰老对言语交流的影响，以及导致“健康老年”人群言语交流潜在退化的各种影响因素。这些基准对于从事与患有健康并发症的老年人沟通方面工作的言语和语言治疗师以及听力学家等从业者有用。更好地了解老年人所经历的沟通困难及其克服这些困难的策略也将有助于专业人士，例如致力于改善老年人生活质量的社会工作者和护理专业人员，以及用于远程医疗和远程监控的语音技术设备的开发人员。重要的是，这项研究还将有助于我们对整个生命周期中的语音感知和生产发展的基本理解。