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听力情况下努力沟通，特别是当他们必须理解一个说话者时，背景中有其他声音。目前，老年听力损失患者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的益处有限，因为语音和背景噪声都被放大。在听众必须忽略其他谈话者分散注意力的讲话的情况下，恢复可听度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，重点是在这些情况下介导理解的感官和认知年龄相关的变化。拟议的实验旨在提供关于为什么老年人在多个谈话者在场时会遇到问题的重要信息。过去的研究得出了相互矛盾的结论，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缺陷的相对重要性。本研究将有助于澄清这一问题，通过研究如何与刺激相关的因素（特别是，工作记忆，处理速度，注意力转换，抑制控制和听力损失）相互作用，以创建问题的理解语音在多说话人的情况下。将讨论两个具体目标：（1）了解为什么竞争性语音信号对老年听众具有如此大的破坏性，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; 2）确定听力损失和认知功能在更现实的通信情况下对语音识别的影响程度。所提出的实验使用两个已建立的任务（例如，同时语音对语音掩蔽，努力的评级）和创新技术（时间交错的语音，眼睛跟踪，对响应时间的限制）来解决这些问题。将测量中年和老年听众的表现，以提供关于哪些功能能力开始在衰老过程中早期和晚期开始下降的信息。该项目的最终结果将是增强 了解限制老年人在日常听力条件下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，将自下而上和自上而下的贡献者的治疗与年龄相关的言语理解问题。

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.