Behavioral Studies of Auditory Aging

ABSTRACT

The common complaints of elderly persons, that speech understanding is often difficult when there is background competition, have been studied for half a century. Putative explanatory factors include loss in audibility, cognitive decline, deficits in frequency resolution and rapid temporal processing, and related problems unique to auditory processing. Experimental approaches fall into two broad categories: (1) studies focusing on group comparisons, and (2) studies focusing on the performance of individuals. Group studies fall into five broad classifications: (1) comparison of an elderly group with one or more young adult groups, (2) cross-sectional studies of different cohorts across a range of ages, (3) longitudinal studies of the same cohort across a range of ages, (4) factor analytic studies, and (5) prediction from a theoretical framework. Studies focusing on the performance of individual elderly persons are motivated by the substantial variability observed among elderly persons and the sense that they should not be treated as a homogeneous group. This article provides one or more examples of experimental outcomes in each type of study and attempts a synthesis of their findings.

KEYWORDS

Presbyacusis - aging - hearing loss - cognitive decline - auditory processing

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