Age-related differences in discrimination of temporal intervals in accented tone sequences

Abstract

The study measured listener sensitivity to increments of a target inter-onset interval (IOI) embedded within isochronous tone sequences that featured a single accented tonal component. The sequences consisted of six 1000-Hz tone bursts separated by silent intervals to establish equal tonal IOIs of 200 ms within the sequence. Tone burst durations within the sequences were 50 ms, except one tone had a longer duration of 100 ms to produce a perception of accent. Duration DLs in ms for increments of a single sequence IOI were measured adaptively by adjusting the duration of the silent interval between two tones. Sequence position of the target IOI differed across conditions. Listeners included young normal-hearing adults and older adults with and without hearing loss. Discrimination performance of the two older listener groups was equivalent and significantly poorer than that of the younger listeners in each discrimination condition. The age-related discrimination deficits were independent of sequence locations of both the target interval and the accented tonal component. Comparative DLs collected for target intervals in unaccented tone sequences with equal tone durations revealed that the detrimental effects of accent on temporal discrimination were primarily restricted to the older listeners.

Efeito da estimulação acústica nas habilidades do processamento temporal em idosos antes e após a protetização auditiva

“…In the present study, the mean percentage of gap recognition was lower and the temporal acuity threshold was higher than what was reported about elderly in the literature 21,35,39 . We noticed that there was no influence of the degree of hearing loss in the temporal resolution auditory skill (Tables 2 and 3), corroborating findings in the specialized literature 4,5,13,41 . Numerous papers state that there are no differences between the temporal acuity threshold and the percentage of gap recognition according to the variable Ear 15,18,19,21,35,40 .…”

“…In the elderly with hearing loss, this threshold can be higher than in elderly without hearing loss 17,35 . Notwithstanding, other papers did not report hearing loss influence in gap detection thresholds 4,5,13,41 . Thus, we recommend that further studies are needed in order to check the effects of age and hearing loss in temporal resolution 15 .…”

“…Thus, the studies show that the aging process deteriorates the temporal ordering process [33][34][35][36] and the mild-to--moderate cochlear hearing loss did impact performance in this task 13,23,33 . In the present study, the moderate or moderately severe hearing loss did not impact the performance of the elderly in these tasks of recognizing the duration pattern, and the mean values are within the range of mean values of the studies with elderly listed in the literature [33][34][35][36] .…”

“…Numerous papers bear evidence that among auditory processing skills, those associated with temporal processing are the most affected by aging [9][10][11][12][13] . The temporal processing role in speech is the discrimination of subtle clues and similar words.…”

“…Temporal processing involves temporal resolution aspects, temporal masking, temporal integration and sorting 14 . The temporal resolution hearing skill is important for human speech understanding, being a prerequisite for reading 13,15 . Human beings are capable of detecting gaps with 2 to 3 ms intervals presented in only one ear, and the auditory cortex neurons are responsible for detecting temporal acuity threshold 16 .…”