Effects of Age and Hearing Loss on the Recognition of Emotions in Speech.
Julie A Christensen, Jenni Sis, Aditya M Kulkarni and 1 others
PMID 30614835WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults and those with hearing loss struggle to identify emotions in speech, with hearing loss worsening the deficit independent of age.
Older listeners were particularly poor at recognizing emotions from male talkers. Sex of the listener did not affect performance once hearing thresholds were accounted for.
Key findings
01Age significantly impacted emotion recognition accuracy, reaction times, and sensitivity, with older listeners performing worse.
02Hearing loss caused additional deficits in sensitivity (d') independent of age, and showed a marginal effect on accuracy when age was treated as a category.
03Older listeners were significantly more susceptible to differences between talkers, performing worse with male talkers than female talkers compared to younger listeners.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only two talkers were used, so findings about talker sex cannot be generalized to all male or female voices. The study did not measure cognitive status, which could confound the relationship between age and emotion recognition. Social context was not included, and real-world communication often relies on visual cues and context which may mitigate these deficits. The age range capped at 75, potentially missing greater declines in older adults. Hearing aid settings were self-selected, not standardized.
Declared interests
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that hearing loss alone explains the difficulty older adults have with emotional speech. The study shows that age-related declines occur even in normal-hearing adults, and that the specific voice of the talker interacts with age, with older adults finding male voices harder to interpret.