Auditory memory and age-related differences in two-tone frequency discrimination: Trace decay and interference

Abstract

We investigated age-related differences in the time course of two-tone frequency discrimination. Healthy young and elderly adults with normal hearing acuity in the 500-2000 Hz range performed a two-alternative forced choice frequency discrimination task. The stimuli were short tones separated by either a 250-ms (short), 850-ms (medium), or 3000-ms (long) silent inter-interstimulus interval (ISI). Frequency discrimination thresholds were estimated using an adaptive staircase procedure. Although young listeners performed better than the elderly at all ISIs, the latter showed a dramatic elevation of discrimination thresholds at 250 ms, while the thresholds of the young subjects increased significantly at 3000 ms. These results suggest that the elderly may be especially vulnerable to the effects of masking produced by the second tone at the short interval, whereas the young listeners tend to be differentially affected by the trace decay at long ISI. The results are discussed in the framework of stimulus persistence hypothesis.

Short-Term Choir Singing Supports Speech-in-Noise Perception and Neural Pitch Strength in Older Adults With Age-Related Hearing Loss

“…Although peripheral losses can be remediated to some degree through the use of assistive technologies such as hearing aids (or, in extreme cases, cochlear implants), central processing deficits seem to persist in spite of such interventions (Chmiel and Jerger, 1996; Killion, 1997). These central processing deficits – including age-related declines in the synchrony of neural firing (Pichora-Fuller and Schneider, 1992; Frisina and Frisina, 1997; Pichora-Fuller et al, 2007), length of recovery time (Walton et al, 1998), and numbers of neurons in auditory nuclei (Frisina and Walton, 2006) – have been associated with age-related losses in key auditory perceptual abilities, such as sound localization (Abel et al, 2000), pitch discrimination (Raz et al, 1989), duration judgments (Fitzgibbons and Gordon-Salant, 1994; Schneider et al, 1994), mistuned harmonic detection (Alain et al, 2001), and speech-in-noise perception (Pichora-Fuller et al, 1995; Russo and Pichora-Fuller, 2008; Schneider et al, 2010). Of the perceptual deficits, the loss of speech-in-noise perception seems to have the most severe impact on the aging adult’s quality of life (e.g., Pichora-Fuller et al, 1995, 2007; Anderson et al, 2011).…”

Mechanism of age-related differences in frequency discrimination with backward masking: Speed of processing or stimulus persistence?

“…Age-related phenomena compatible with increases in sensory persistence have been found in both auditory (Raz et al, 1989;Robin & Royer, 1989) and visual (Kline & Schieber, 1985;Royer & Gilmore, 1985) domains. A potential neural mechanism of increased stimulus persistence has been proposed by Robin and Royer, who suggested that there is an age-related increase in inhibitory interactions of cells sensitive to onset and offset of the stimuli.…”

“…At none of the tested frequencies did the mean thresholds of the elderly exceed 21 dB, and there were no significant hearing differences by sex. All listeners had had 3–6 hr of frequency-discrimination training because they had already taken part in at least one of the earlier studies (Raz, Millman, & Moberg, 1989; Raz & Moberg, 1987).…”

“…In light of Kallman and Massaro's finding, the results of Experiment 1 may be interpreted as evidence of age differences at early stages of auditory processing, with the question of age-related differences in synthesized auditory memory remaining unanswered. Raz et al (1989) reported that in a 2IFC frequency-discrimination task without a designated masker, the performance of the elderly listeners was adversely affected by shortening of the intertarget interval to 250 ms, but the thresholds of the young listeners did not change. In that paradigm, the masking effect was produced by the second target that acted as an acoustically similar masker on the first target.…”

Effects of choir participation and musical training on auditory processing in older adults

“…These age-related declines lead to impaired processing of acoustic information, whereby temporal and spectral information are not preserved in the neural representation of sounds (Parbery-Clark, Anderson, Hittner, & Kraus, 2012). Such persistent central processing deficits have been associated with age-related losses in key auditory perceptual abilities, including sound localization (Abel, Giguere, Consoli, & Papsin, 2000); pitch discrimination (Raz, Millman, & Moberg, 1989); melodic discrimination (F. A. Russo et al, 2012); duration (Fitzgibbons & Gordon-Salant, 1994), gap (Schneider, Pichora-Fuller, Kowalchuk, & Lamb, 1994), and mistuned harmonic (Alain, McDonald, Ostroff, & Schneider, 2001) detection; and speech perception in noise (Pichora-Fuller, Schneider, & Daneman, 1995;F.…”