Aging and speech perception in complex listening environments

描述(由申请人提供)：老年人经常在不利的倾听环境下难以沟通，特别是当他们必须在背景中有其他声音的情况下听懂一个说话者的话。目前听力损失老年人的康复主要集中在通过助听器恢复听力。不幸的是，这在困难的收听环境中益处有限，因为语音和背景噪音都会被放大。在听者必须忽略其他说话者令人分心的讲话的情况下，恢复可听性不足以确保成功的交流。这项研究的长期目标是开发评估和治疗方法，专注于在这些情况下调节理解的感觉和认知年龄相关的变化。拟议中的实验旨在为老年人在不止一个说话者在场的情况下遇到问题提供重要信息。关于年龄相关的外周/感觉因素和年龄相关的认知变化在解释言语理解障碍方面的相对重要性，过去的研究得出了相互矛盾的结论。将解决两个具体目标：1)了解为什么相互竞争的语音信号会对年长的听众造成如此大的干扰，以及听力损失和认知处理如何影响他们应对这种干扰的能力；以确定在更现实的交流环境中听力损失和认知功能对语音识别的影响程度。提出的实验既使用既定任务(例如，同时语音-语音掩蔽、努力评级)和创新技术(时间交错语音、眼球跟踪、反应时间限制)来解决这些问题。中年和老年听众的表现将被测量，以便提供关于哪些功能能力在衰老过程中较早或较晚开始下降的信息。这个项目的最终结果将是一个增强的 了解限制老年人在日常听力环境中充分参与对话的因素。反过来，这可能会推动康复方案的改进，其中包括对与年龄相关的言语理解问题的自下而上和自上而下的贡献者的治疗。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Older adults often struggle to communicate in adverse listening situations, especially when they must understand one talker when there are other voices in the background. Current rehabilitation of older adults with hearing loss focuses primarily on restoring audibility via hearing aids. Unfortunately, this is of limited benefit in dificult listening environments because both speech and background noise are amplified. Restoring audibility is not enough to ensure successful communication in situations where listeners must ignore the distracting speech of other talkers. The long-term goal of this research is to develop evaluation and treatment methods that focus on both the sensory and cognitive age-related changes that mediate comprehension in these situations. The proposed experiments are designed to provide vital information about why older adults experience problems in the presence of more than one talker. Past research has yielded conflicting conclusions about the relative importance of age-related peripheral/sensory factors and age-related cognitive changes in explaining deficits in speech understanding. The studies in this proposal will help to clarify tis issue by examining how listener-related factors (specifically, working memory, processing speed, attention-switching, inhibitory control, and hearing loss) interact with stimulus-related factors to create problems understanding speech in multi-talker situations. Two specific aims will be addressed: 1.) To understand why competing speech signals are so disruptive for older listeners, and how hearing loss and cognitive processing affect their ability to cope with this interference; and 2.) To determine the degree to which hearing loss and cognitive function impact speech recognition in more realistic communication situations. The proposed experiments use both established tasks (e.g., simultaneous speech-on-speech masking, ratings of effort) and innovative techniques (temporally interleaved speech, eye tracking, limitations on response time) to address these questions. The performance of middle-aged as well as older listeners will be measured in order to provide information about which functional abilities begin to decline early vs. later in the aging process. The end result of this project will be an enhanced understanding of the factors that limit older adults from fully participating in conversations in everyday listening conditions. This, in turn, may drive improvements in rehabilitative protocols that incorporate treatment of both bottom-up and top-down contributors to age-related speech understanding problems.