Human aging compromises attentional control of auditory perception.

Abstract

Older adults often experience hearing difficulties in multitalker situations. Attentional control of auditory perception is crucial in situations where a plethora of auditory inputs compete for further processing. We combined an intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm with attentional manipulations to study adult age differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control of auditory processing. When confronted with two competing sources of verbal auditory input, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more driven by perceptual saliency than younger adults. These findings suggest that aging severely impairs the attentional regulation of auditory perception.

Acoustic Detail Guides Attention Allocation in a Selective Listening Task

“…This result confirms prior research showing that older listeners usually require higher signal-to-noise ratios to hear individual words in noise than do younger listeners (Pichora-Fuller, 2003;Schneider et al, 2000;Murphy, McDowd, & Wilcox, 1999;PichoraFuller et al, 1995). The need for less attention-demanding listening conditions in older participants might speak for a decline in attentional control, causing difficulties in attending relevant and ignoring irrelevant sound sources (Passow et al, 2014). Third, the speedup of response times with higher levels of TFS preservation was stronger in older compared with younger participants (Figure 2C and D).…”

What does successful speech-in-noise perception in aging depend on? Electrophysiological correlates of high and low performance in older adults

“…Taken together, these results indicate that the controlled processing of the multi-speech stimuli in the Old-High group was as efficient as in the Young group, whereas the Old-Low group showed deficits both in allocation of attentional resources (indicated by reduced P2 amplitude relative to the Old-High group) and in inhibitory control (indicated by reduced N2 amplitude relative to the Young group). Less efficient attentional control has recently been related to age-related hearing difficulties in multi-talker situations (Passow et al, 2012).…”

Alterations to the attention system in adults with tinnitus are modality specific

“…The impact of hearing loss on attention-demanding tasks has been even more extensively studied, primarily in the context of age-related hearing loss (Best et al, 2009;Craik, 2007;Passow et al, 2012;Passow et al, 2014).…”