How Age and Linguistic Competence Affect Memory for Heard Information

Abstract

The short-term memory performance of a group of younger adults, for whom English was a second language (young EL2 listeners), was compared to that of younger and older adults for whom English was their first language (EL1 listeners). To-be-remembered words were presented in noise and in quiet. When presented in noise, the listening situation was adjusted to ensure that the likelihood of recognizing the individual words was comparable for all groups. Previous studies which used the same paradigm found memory performance of older EL1 adults on this paired-associate task to be poorer than that of their younger EL1 counterparts both in quiet and in a background of babble. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the less well-established semantic and linguistic skills of EL2 listeners would also lead to memory deficits even after equating for word recognition as was done for the younger and older EL1 listeners. No significant differences in memory performance were found between young EL1 and EL2 listeners after equating for word recognition, indicating that the EL2 listeners' poorer semantic and linguistic skills had little effect on their ability to memorize and recall paired associates. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that age-related declines in memory are primarily due to age-related declines in higher-order processes supporting stream segregation and episodic memory. Such declines are likely to increase the load on higher-order (possibly limited) cognitive processes supporting memory. The problems that these results pose for the comprehension of spoken language in these three groups are discussed.

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“…They used memory performance as a measure of attentional engagement during word recognition (Heinrich & Schneider, 2011;Heinrich et al, 2008;Murphy, Craik, Li, & Schneider, 2000;Schneider, Avivi-Reich, Leung, & Heinrich, 2016) and showed that older listeners' memory was disproportionately more affected by unfavourable listening conditions (speech perception in noise) than that of younger listeners, even when the listening situation was adjusted individually so that all listeners were equally likely to recognize the individual words being spoken. They interpreted this result as showing that older listeners employed more attention-based top-down processes to accomplish the same level of perception of the words, which then depleted the pool of resources available for subsequent processing of the heard information.…”

Do age and linguistic background alter the audiovisual advantage when listening to speech in the presence of energetic and informational masking?

“…), and the characteristics of the listeners. For a discussion of the relative contributions of these factors to speech recognition and comprehension, seeSchneider, Avivi-Reich, and Daneman (2016);Schneider, Avivi-Reich, Leung, & Heinrich, (2016) andAvivi-Reich et al (2014).Atten Percept Psychophys (2018) 80:242-261…”

The role of cognition for speech-in-noise perception: Considering individual listening strategies related to aging and hearing loss

“…An application of the knowledge, both theoretical and experimental, available in cognitive science could help us develop theoretically based predictions about which cognitive functions are involved in SiN listening, and under what conditions. Studies now increasingly consider the role of cognitive functions other than WM for SiN perception, including inhibition (Stenbäck et al, 2016), attention (Heinrich et al, 2015), response control (Heinrich et al, 2016), vocabulary and language comprehension (Schneider, Avivi-Reich, & Daneman, 2016; Schneider, Avivi-Reich, Leung, & Heinrich, 2016). Understanding the relationship of these concepts to one another and relating them systematically to different listening situations would greatly increase the potential clinical impact of this research.…”

“…This leads to group-level differences between younger and older listeners. A case in point is a series of studies in which a word-in-noise perception task was individually adjusted to produce the same overall accuracy level for both younger and older listeners (Heinrich & Schneider, 2011; Murphy et al, 2000; Schneider, Avivi-Reich, Leung, & Heinrich, 2016). Then, the accuracy with which the perceived words could be recalled from memory was measured and compared to recall accuracy in quiet.…”