Differences in Auditory Perception Between Young and Older Adults When Controlling for Differences in Hearing Loss and Cognition.
Jennifer J Lentz, Larry E Humes, Gary R Kidd
PMID 34989641WHAT IT FOUND
No broad evidence of age-related central auditory changes was found.
Older adults' poorer non-speech auditory scores were mostly tied to hearing loss and working memory. After accounting for both, older adults scored better on several temporal tasks.
Key findings
01When hearing loss and working memory were included as covariates, older adults had significantly better adjusted scores on four psychoacoustic tasks: broadband modulation detection, MDI unmodulated, anisochrony, and harmonic mistuning.
02In the full sample of 155 adults, working memory was the predominant predictor for five of seven psychoacoustic measures with significant predictors, while age or hearing loss was predominant for the other two.
03Among the 121 older adults, chronological age was not a significant predictor of psychoacoustic performance, while working memory was significant in 5 of 6 regression cases and hearing loss in 3 of the 6.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The older and younger groups differed in size, and age, hearing loss, and working memory were correlated, so their separate effects are hard to disentangle. Some young listeners performed worse than expected on modulation detection tasks, so the older group's advantage on those tasks may partly reflect the young sample. The older group excluded severe hearing loss and signs of mild-moderate cognitive impairment, so the results may not apply to patients with more severe loss or cognitive impairment. The measured outcomes were non-speech psychoacoustic thresholds, not speech perception results. Visual acuity was not measured for the cognitive tests, although visibility and comprehension were confirmed in practice trials. Missing data were replaced by mean values in some analyses, and 14.8% of masking-level difference data were missing.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was supported by NIH grant AG008293.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the older adults' better adjusted scores as proof that aging improves auditory processing. The advantage appeared after accounting for hearing loss and working memory, and the authors could not rule out that the young listeners performed worse than expected.