AUDITORY-VISUAL INTEGRATION AND AGE

该项目将是第一个评估成年人一生中视力增强变化的大规模调查。与单听相比，视觉增强是看和听说话者所提供的优势，对于老年人的听力康复是一个至关重要的问题。本提案的独特贡献有三个方面。首先，我们将评估纯视觉语音识别和听觉-视觉整合技能如何促进视觉增强的变化，并确定这些变化是否与老年人整合两种感觉信号(无论是语音还是非语音)的能力更具全局性下降有关。表现将与感知到的沟通障碍有关。第二，Blamey，Alcantara，Whitford，&Clark(1989)和Braida(1991)开发的两个听觉-视觉整合的定量模型，将使我们能够确定年龄是否影响个体如何整合语音信号的特定特征，以及它如何影响他们实现听觉和视觉信号的最佳整合的能力。第三，我们将确定听力损失的存在是否会影响老年人和年轻人的整合能力，以及语音材料的类型是否与一个人的整合能力相互作用。结果可能会影响老年听力康复计划的几个阶段，包括我们如何评估语音识别技能，以及在个人接受适当的放大后，我们为客户及其家人提供的后续、支持和咨询的类型。此外，这一结果可能对衰老模型和听觉-视觉语音识别模型具有重要的理论意义，并可能阐明导致听力损失患者交流障碍的变量。在五年的时间里，根据年龄和听力状况挑选的200名受试者将参加一系列横断面实验。通过一系列广泛的试点研究，制定并测试了实验方法。这些实验旨在评估受试者的视觉增强、仅视觉语音识别、听觉-视觉整合、听觉-听觉语音整合和听觉-听觉非语音整合的水平。据假设，视觉增强会随着年龄的增长而下降，这种下降将与整合感觉信息的能力的全球下降有关，而不是与仅有视觉的语音识别能力的变化有关。

This project will be the first large-scale investigation to evaluate changes in visual enhancement across the adult life span. Visual enhancement is the advantage afforded by seeing as well as hearing the talker, as compared to listening alone, and is an issue of critical significance to the audiological rehabilitation of older persons. The unique contributions of the present proposal are threefold. First, we will assess how vision-only speech recognition and auditory-visual integration skills contribute to changes in visual enhancement, and determine if changes relate to more global declines in older persons' abilities to integrate two sensory signals, be they speech or non-speech. Performance will be related to perceived communication handicap. Second, two quantitative models of auditory- visual integration, one developed by Blamey, Alcantara, Whitford, & Clark (1989) and the other by Braida (1991), will allow us to determine whether age affects how individuals integrate specific features of the speech signal, and also, how it affects their ability to achieve optimum integration of the auditory and visual signals. Third, we will determine whether or not the presence of hearing loss may affect integration performance for both older and younger adults, and whether the type of speech material interacts with one's ability to integrate. The results may affect several stages of the geriatric audiological rehabilitation plan, including how we assess speech recognition skills and the kinds of follow-up, support, and counseling we provide to clients and their families after an individual receives appropriate amplification. In addition, the results may have important theoretical implications for models of aging and auditory-visual speech recognition, and may elucidate variables that contribute to the communication handicap experienced by persons who have hearing loss. Over a five-year period 200 subjects, selected on the basis of age and hearing status, will be enrolled in a set of cross-sectional experiments. The experimental methodologies have been developed and tested through a series of extensive pilot studies. The experiments are designed to assess subjects' levels of visual enhancement, vision-only speech recognition, auditory-visual integration, auditory-auditory speech integration, and auditory-auditory non- speech integration. It is hypothesized that visual enhancement will be shown to decline with age, and that this decline will be associated with a global decline in the ability to integrate sensory information, not to a change in vision-only speech recognition abilities.