Effect of energetic and informational masking on speech reception performance in middle-aged adults

Abstract

Speech reception in the presence of competing sounds declines in middle age. Experiments on young normal-hearing listeners have revealed that speech reception performance in the presence of competing sounds is determined by the cumulative effects of two different types of masking: energetic masking and information masking. Here we examined how energetic and informational masking degrades speech reception in middle-aged adults. Fifteen young (seven males, eight females, 20–26 years) and seventeen middle-aged (four males, thirteen females, 47–57 years) listeners with normal hearing participated in the experiment. Speech reception in the presence of competing sounds was assessed by the Coordinated Response Measure. Participants were required to listen to a target phrase spoken by a female in the presence of noise or a single interfering phrase spoken by the same talker, same-sex talker, or different-sex talker. Speech reception performance was lower in middle-aged adults than young adults, regardless of the type of disturbing sounds. The performance differences between the same-talker and different-sex talker conditions, which reflects the effects of informational masking, was larger in middle-aged adults. These results suggest that both energetic and informational masking contributes to the degradation of speech reception in middle-aged adults.