Exploring the Link Between Cognitive Abilities and Speech Recognition in the Elderly Under Different Listening Conditions

Abstract

Elderly listeners are known to differ considerably in their ability to understand speech in noise. Several studies have addressed the underlying factors that contribute to these differences. These factors include audibility, and age-related changes in supra-threshold auditory processing abilities, and it has been suggested that differences in cognitive abilities may also be important. The objective of this study was to investigate associations between performance in cognitive tasks and speech recognition under different listening conditions in older adults with either age appropriate hearing or hearing-impairment. To that end, speech recognition threshold (SRT) measurements were performed under several masking conditions that varied along the perceptual dimensions of dip listening, spatial separation, and informational masking. In addition, a neuropsychological test battery was administered, which included measures of verbal working and short-term memory, executive functioning, selective and divided attention, and lexical and semantic abilities. Age-matched groups of older adults with either age-appropriate hearing (ENH, n = 20) or aided hearing impairment (EHI, n = 21) participated. In repeated linear regression analyses, composite scores of cognitive test outcomes (evaluated using PCA) were included to predict SRTs. These associations were different for the two groups. When hearing thresholds were controlled for, composed cognitive factors were significantly associated with the SRTs for the ENH listeners. Whereas better lexical and semantic abilities were associated with lower (better) SRTs in this group, there was a negative association between attentional abilities and speech recognition in the presence of spatially separated speech-like maskers. For the EHI group, the pure-tone thresholds (averaged across 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) were significantly associated with the SRTs, despite the fact that all signals were amplified and therefore in principle audible.

<p>Auditory Working Memory Explains Variance in Speech Recognition in Older Listeners Under Adverse Listening Conditions</p>

“…14 However, we found that older listeners did not necessarily show a stronger association between LS and speech recognition in harder conditions (sentences with multi-talker noise vs sentences with multi-talker noise and TC). These results are not consistent with the findings from the ELU-model 43 that predicted higher involvement of working memory under adverse listening conditions for speech recognition, but consistent with recent studies 24,44 that included participants with a narrow age range or the control for age.…”

Contributions of Age-Related and Audibility-Related Deficits to Aided Consonant Identification in Presbycusis: A Causal-Inference Analysis

“…In the above-mentioned study conducted by Humes, for example, the explained variance for monosyllabic word recognition scores in quiet and in noise fell to < 5% when the stimuli were spectrally shaped prior to presentation to simulate the effect of a hearing aid. However, in general, a residual correlation is still observed between PTA and performance, especially in the most demanding listening situations (up to ~ 50% of explained variance in a spatialized sentence comprehension task using two simultaneous linguistic and non-linguistic maskers; Nuesse et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Although this body of evidence points toward an overall role of suprathreshold auditory processes and cognition in the speech-in-noise comprehension deficit in the elderly, it is worth noting that the precise mechanisms involved are still unclear. In particular, no single cognitive function appeared as significant across all studies (Akeroyd, 2008 ) and several researchers were unable to find a significant link between speech recognition in noise and the cognitive abilities they measured in their pool of participants (Schoof and Rosen, 2014 ; Meister et al, 2015 ; Lopez-Poveda et al, 2017 ; Nuesse et al, 2018 ). Similarly, studies are not always consistent on the role of auditory temporal processing skills on aging speech perception.…”

FreeHear: A New Sound-Field Speech-in-Babble Hearing Assessment Tool

“…These tasks have the obvious merit of providing an assessment with the face validity of speech perception but may lack standardization and, therefore, clinical utility. Word and sentence stimuli also rest heavily on higher order cognitive processing, particularly in the language, attention, and memory domains (Kaandorp, Smits, Merkus, Festen, & Goverts, 2017; Nuesse, Steenken, Neher, & Holube, 2018). Because they involve speech stimuli, they also need to be adapted to and normalized for different languages, an arduous and imprecise process.…”