AUDITORY-VISUAL INTEGRATION AND AGE

描述（由申请人提供）：此申请直接响应美国复苏和再投资法案的目标，该法案旨在通过改善临床护理和创造就业机会来加快科学研究的节奏，并投资于经济影响。在面对面的环境中理解口语的能力是人类交流的一个组成部分，但这种能力似乎随着年龄的增长而减弱。令人惊讶的是，很少有测试可靠地评估基于听觉刺激的成人口语理解能力，也没有测试评估基于视听刺激的理解能力。现有的为数不多的听觉口语理解测试只包括一种或两种形式，因此不适合纵向跟踪表现。为了实现父母补助金中的三个具体目标，其中一个涉及评估老年人在18个月时间间隔内的话语理解能力，我们开发了视听测试，讲座，访谈和口语叙述（LISN）测试。该考试由8个表格组成，每个表格由6个口语段落组成。在听到和看到谈话者讲述每个段落后，考生回答六个理解问题。在本增编项目中，新雇用的工作人员将进行必要的测试，以确定八种LISN表格在纯听觉和视听两种情况下的可靠性和有效性。参与者将包括100名有偿志愿者，其中50名年龄在20-30岁之间，50名年龄在70-80岁之间。根据单个段落和问题的数据，我们将重新组合这些段落（并在适当的时候修改问题），以创建8个等效的形式，每个形式有6个段落，并创建多个缩短的临床版本的测试。这项研究不仅将有助于解释父母资助的研究结果，而且还将产生一种重要的研究和临床测量工具，一种口语理解测试，这是听力学家和研究人员迄今为止所缺少的测试。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is directly responsive to the goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which are to accelerate the tempo of scientific research and to invest in economic impact through improved clinical care and job creation. The ability to comprehend spoken language in a face-to-face setting is an integral part of human communication, but this ability appears to diminish with age. Surprisingly, there are very few tests that reliably assess adult comprehension of spoken language based on auditory stimuli, and no tests for assessing comprehension based on audiovisual stimuli. The few existing auditory spoken language comprehension tests include only one or two forms, and so are not appropriate for tracking performance longitudinally. In order to achieve three of the Specific Aims in the parent grant, including one that involves assessing older person's discourse comprehension over an 18-month time interval, we developed the audiovisual test, Lectures, Interviews, and Spoken Narratives (LISN) Test. This test consists of eight forms, each consisting of six spoken passages. After hearing and seeing a talker speak each passage, test-takers answer six comprehension questions. In this Supplement project, newly hired staff will conduct the necessary tests to establish the reliability and validity of the eight LISN forms, for both an auditory-only presentation condition and an audiovisual presentation condition. Participants will include 100 paid volunteers, 50 of whom are between the ages of 20-30 yrs and 50 of whom are between the ages of 70-80 yrs. Based on the data for the individual passages and questions, we will recombine the passages (and revise questions when appropriate) to create eight equivalent forms of six passages each and to create multiple shortened, clinical versions of the test. This research will not only facilitate interpretation of the findings from the parent grant, but will also result in an important research and clinical measurement instrument, a spoken language comprehension test that has here-to-fore been missing from the arsenal of tests available to audiologists and researchers. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Under the parent grant, we are conducting the systematic investigation of how aging affects audiovisual integration and spoken language comprehension, and how performance varies with hearing and visual acuity. In the proposed project, we will establish the reliability and validity of alternative forms of our newly developed test of spoken language comprehension, a test that is the centerpiece assessment instrument for the parent grant and that may well become an important clinical tool for audiologists and researchers who work with older adults.