CONTROLLING FOR AGE RELATED HEARING LOSS CAN ELIMINATE AGINGDIFFERENCES IN LEXICAL COMPETITION: EVIDENCE FROM EYE-TRACKING AS ANONLINE MEASUREMENT OF AGE AND NOISE EFFECTS ON LISTENING

摘要

As people age, they experience greater difficultyunderstanding speech, particularly in environments withbackground noise. For example, although a 70-year-oldgrandmother can enjoy her favorite talk radio program at anormal volume in a quiet room, she may have tosubstantially increase the volume when her grandchildrenare playing in an adjacent room, and even then may notaccurately hear all of the dialogue. A central question inlifespan approaches to human communication concerns theorigin of these speech comprehension difficulties, whetherthey stem from age-related sensory decline and/or cognitivechanges. For example, the difficulties the grandmother isexperiencing might be explained by an informationdegradation account (Schneider & Pichora-Fuller, 2000)whereby the cognitive system was provided withdeteriorated sensory (auditory) input. Alternatively, thedifficulties could arise from less effective inhibitorymechanisms (Hasher & Zacks, 1988) that work to inhibit theirrelevant noise in the signal, or from a generalized slowingof all cognitive processes (Cerella & Hale, 1994), includingthose underlying speech comprehension. The goal of thecurrent study is to provide insights into the origins of age-related changes in speech understanding in noise.