| Effect of age on silent gap discrimination in synthetic speech stimuli. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 15157128 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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The difficulty that older listeners experience understanding conversational speech may be related to their limited ability to use information present in the silent intervals (i.e., temporal gaps) between dynamic speech sounds. When temporal gaps are present between nonspeech stimuli that are spectrally invariant (e.g., noise bands or sinusoids), older listeners are less able to resolve temporal gaps than are younger listeners. It has also been demonstrated that temporal gap perception deteriorates as the frequency difference between the sounds bordering the silent gap increases, and this effect becomes more pronounced with age (J. Lister, J. Besing, and J. Koehnke, 2002; J. Lister, J. Koehnke, and J. Besing, 2000). In this study, the effect of age on the ability to discriminate temporal gaps in dynamic stimuli (i.e., changing in frequency and duration over time) was measured in a gap duration discrimination (GDD) task. The participants were two groups of listeners with normal hearing sensitivity through at least 4000 Hz: (a) ages 21-38 years and (b) ages 50-72 years. Stimuli simulated the frequency characteristics of 1 consonant (/s/), a steady-state vowel (/a/), a weak diphthong (/eI/), and a voiced bilabial plosive (/burst/) in 6 combinations: (a) /s-a/, (b) /s-eI/, (c) /a-a/, (d) /eI-eI/, (e) /burst-a/, and (f) /burst-eI/. For each of the 6 phoneme combinations, 2 conditions of stimulus duration were used: (a) fixed, meaning that the durations of leading and trailing noises were fixed at values typical for the speech sounds being simulated, and (b) random, meaning that duration varied randomly within a range acceptable for accurate perception of the speech contrasts. Gap duration difference limens (GDDLs) were significantly larger for the older listeners than for younger listeners. For both groups, GDDLs were poorer for the spectrally dynamic marker pairs (e.g., /burst-eI/) than for the marker pairs that were relatively stable in frequency over time (/a-a/). GDD performance also was poorer for the random conditionthan for the fixed condition. Listener age and hearing sensitivity were significantly correlated, and age was not significantly correlated with GDD when controlling for hearing sensitivity. The authors conclude that temporal resolution (as measured by gap discrimination) is affected by age, stimulus complexity, and, perhaps, by hearing sensitivity in a speech context. |
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Authors:
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Jennifer Lister; Kenton Tarver |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR Volume: 47 ISSN: 1092-4388 ISO Abbreviation: J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. Publication Date: 2004 Apr |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2004-05-25 Completed Date: 2004-08-31 Revised Date: 2006-11-15 |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 9705610 Medline TA: J Speech Lang Hear Res Country: United States |
Other Details:
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Languages: eng Pagination: 257-68 Citation Subset: IM |
Affiliation:
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University of South Florida, Department of Communications Sciences and Disorders, Tampa, FL, USA. jlister@chuma.l.cas.usf.edu |
Export Citation:
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| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
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Acoustic Stimulation Adult Age Factors Aged Aging / physiology* Analysis of Variance Attention Case-Control Studies Humans Middle Aged Pitch Discrimination Speech Perception / physiology* Time Perception / physiology* |
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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