Relationship Between Working Memory and Speech-in-Noise Recognition in Young and Older Adult Listeners With Age-Appropriate Hearing

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between working memory (WM) capacity and speech recognition in noise in both a group of young adults and a group of older adults. Method Thirty-three older adults with a mean age of 71.0 (range: 60.4–82.7) years and 27 young adults with a mean age of 21.7 (range: 19.1–25.0) years participated in the study. All participants had age-appropriate hearing and no history of central nervous system dysfunction. WM capacity was measured using the van den Noort version of the Reading Span Test, and recognition of sentences in the presence of a stationary speech-shaped noise was measured as the speech reception threshold for 50% correct identification by using the Leuven Intelligibility Sentence Test. Results The older adults had significantly worse WM capacity scores, t (58) = 8.266, p < .001, and significantly more difficulty understanding sentences in noise than the younger adults, t (58) = −6.068, p < .001. In the group of older adults, a correlation was found ( r = −.488, n = 33, p = .004) between the results of the WM capacity test (Reading Span Test) and the results of the speech-recognition-in-noise test (Leuven Intelligibility Sentence Test), meaning that the higher the WM performance was, the better was the speech recognition in noise. This correlation cannot be found in young normal-hearing listeners. Conclusions This study shows deleterious effects of age on both WM capacity and speech recognition in noise. Interestingly, only in the group of older adults was a significant relation found between WM capacity and speech recognition in noise. The current results caution against the assumption that WM necessarily supports speech-in-noise identification independently of the age and hearing status of the listener.

Effects of Adaptive Non-linear Frequency Compression in Hearing Aids on Mandarin Speech and Sound-Quality Perception

“…Cognitive ability and level of linguistic knowledge could also potentially affect sentence recognition in noise. Although age is not the only factor related to cognitive ability and level of linguistic knowledge and we found no correlation between age and speech recognition performance in our sample, other studies have indicated that those factors might be especially important for elderly patients with profound hearing loss (Best et al, 2018;Nuesse et al, 2018;Vermeire et al, 2019). Another note is that the sentence materials used in this study were recorded by a male talker.…”

Working-Memory, Alpha-Theta Oscillations and Musical Training in Older Age: Research Perspectives for Speech-on-speech Perception

“…Specifically related to WM, poorer speech perception in older adults has been linked to age-related changes in WM, and particularly poorer attentional control compared to younger adults ( Goossens et al, 2017 ). Likewise, lower WM and inhibitory control performance for normal hearing older adults is associated with more profound difficulties during speech-on-speech ( Vermeire et al, 2019 ), and auditory working memory scores have been observed as the strongest predictor of performance ( Anderson et al, 2013 ). Thus from the perspective of the ELU, one contribution to impoverished speech-on-speech understanding in older adults could be reduced functionality in the WM-governed explicit processing loop consisting of pre-diction and post-diction that occurs after phonological mismatch (RAMBPHO).…”

Performance on stochastic figure-ground perception varies with individual differences in speech-in-noise recognition and working memory capacity

“…In addition to the acoustic properties of the stimulus, interactions among individual difference factors, such as age, working memory capacity (WMC), and musical experience also contribute to differences in auditory perception, stream segregation, and temporal auditory acuity that underlie speech-in-noise recognition. For example, auditory WMC has been positively associated with speech-in-noise recognition (Bidelman & Yoo, 2020;Lad et al, 2020), although this relationship is sometimes not observed in younger adults (e.g., Füllgrabe & Rosen, 2016a, 2016bVermeire et al, 2019) who tend to have better speech-in-noise perception than older adults (Presacco et al, 2016;Vermeire et al, 2019). Although the relationship between WMC and speech-in-noise tasks is sometimes dependent on age, studies investigating musical expertise have found that, for both younger (Bidelman & Yoo, 2020;Parbery-Clark et al, 2009) and older adults (Parbery-Clark et al, 2011), individuals with greater musical experience perform better on auditory WMC and speech-innoise tasks (see Coffey et al, 2017 for a review on musician advantages in SIN tasks).…”