Investigating the role of supra-threshold auditory processing and cognitive abilities in presbyacusis

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence and experimental investigations indicate that older people experience increased speech-perception difficulties, especially in noisy environments. Since peripheral hearing sensitivity declines with age, lower speech intelligibility can often be explained by a reduction in audibility. However, aided speech-perception in hearing-impaired listeners frequently falls short of the performance level that would be expected based on the audibility of the speech signal. Given that many of these listeners are older, poor performance may be partly caused by age-related changes in supra-threshold auditory and/or cognitive processes that are not captured by an audiometric assessment. The presentation will discuss experimental evidence obtained from clinically normal-hearing adult listeners showing that auditory temporal processing, cognition, and speech-in-noise perception are indeed linked and, independently of hearing loss, decline across the adult lifespan. These findings highlight the need to take...