Aging and speech perception in complex listening environments

复杂听力环境中的老化和语音感知

• 批准号: 8677870
• 负责人: Karen S Helfer
• 金额: $ 26.35万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-07-20 至 2017-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8677870
• 关键词: Accounting; Activities of Daily Living; Address; Affect; Age; Aging; Aging-Related Process; Attention; Auditory; Cognition; Cognitive; Communication; Complex; Comprehension; Conflict (Psychology); Cueing for speech; Cues; Development; Elderly; Ensure; Environment; Evaluation; Eye; Goals; Hearing Aids; Hearing problem; Individual; Lead; Masks; Measures; Mediating; Methods; Noise; Performance; Peripheral; Persons; Phonetics; Process; Protocols documentation; Reaction Time; Rehabilitation therapy; Relative (related person); Research; Research Support; Role; Semantics; Sensory; Short-Term Memory; Signal Transduction; Source; Speech; Speech Perception; Stimulus; Techniques; Testing; Training; Visual; Voice; Work; age related; age related cognitive change; cognitive function; coping; design; experience; hearing impairment; improved; innovation; interest; lexical; loss of function; memory process; middle age; processing speed; programs; research study; segregation; skills; sound; speech recognition; visual information

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：老年人在不利的聆听环境中常常难以进行交流，尤其是当他们必须在背景中有其他声音的情况下理解某个谈话者的意思时。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，这在困难的聆听环境中效果有限，因为语音和背景噪声都会被放大。在听众必须忽略其他讲话者分散注意力的讲话的情况下，恢复听力并不足以确保成功的沟通。这项研究的长期目标是开发评估和治疗方法，重点关注与年龄相关的感觉和认知变化，这些变化可介导这些情况下的理解。拟议的实验旨在提供重要信息，解释为什么老年人在不止一个说话者在场的情况下会遇到问题。过去的研究对于与年龄相关的外周/感觉因素和与年龄相关的认知变化在解释言语理解缺陷方面的相对重要性得出了相互矛盾的结论。本提案中的研究将通过检查听者相关因素（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）如何与刺激相关因素相互作用，从而产生理解语音的问题，从而有助于澄清这个问题。多人讲话的情况。将解决两个具体目标： 1.) 了解为什么竞争性语音信号对老年听众来说具有如此大的干扰性，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交流情况下影响语音识别的程度。所提出的实验使用既定任务（例如，同步语音掩蔽、努力评级）和创新技术（时间交错语音、眼动追踪、响应时间限制）来解决这些问题。将测量中年和老年听众的表现，以便提供有关哪些功能能力在衰老过程的早期和后期开始下降的信息。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，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进行治疗。