Purpose: This study investigated methods used to simulate factors associated with reduced audibility, increased speech levels, and spectral shaping for aided older adults with hearing loss. Simulations provided to younger normal-hearing adults were used to investigate the effect of sensation level, speech presentation level, and spectral shape in…

Purpose: Human auditory nerve (AN) activity estimated from the amplitude of the first prominent negative peak (N1) of the compound action potential (CAP) is typically quantified using either a peak-to-peak measurement or a baseline-corrected measurement. However, the reliability of these 2 common measurement techniques has not been evaluated but…

Purpose: Music training has been proposed as a possible tool for auditory training in older adults, as it may improve both auditory and cognitive skills. However, the evidence to support such benefits is mixed. The goal of this study was to determine the differential effects of lifelong musical training and working memory on speech recognition in…

Purpose: This study explored the extent to which hearing loss affected positive social interactions in older adults living in rural and urban communities. Method: Pure-tone behavioral hearing assessments were administered to 80 adults 60 years of age or older. In addition, all participants completed 2 questionnaires, the Medical Outcomes Study…

Purpose: The aims of the study were to compare the Cognitive Self-Report Questionnaire (CSRQ; Spina, Ruff, & Mahncke, 2006) Hearing and Cognitive subscale ratings among older adults with and without probable mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and to examine whether self-report, as measured by the CSRQ, is associated with objective measures of…

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of aging and cochlear implant (CI) on psychoacoustic and speech recognition abilities and to assess the relative contributions of psychoacoustic and demographic factors to speech recognition of older CI (OCI) users. Method: Twelve OCI users, 12 older acoustic-hearing (OAH) listeners age-matched to…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine inhibition of irrelevant information in younger and older English monolingual and Spanish--English bilingual adults. Method: Sixty-one participants divided into four groups: 15 younger English monolinguals, 16 younger Spanish-English bilinguals, 15 older English monolinguals, and 15 older…

Purpose: The purposes of the current study were to examine the effect of age on Spanish-English bilinguals' speech recognition performance and to identify differences in speech recognition performance between Spanish and English bilinguals' 1st and 2nd languages. Method: Fifteen younger adult Spanish-English bilinguals, 15 older adult…

One core question in studies of language processing is the extent to which interlocutors engage in real-time communicative perspective-taking. Current evidence suggests that both children and young adult listeners are able to draw on common ground (shared knowledge) to guide referential interpretation. However, less is known about older listeners,…

The auditory system helps regulate phonation. A speaker's perception of their own voice is likely to be of both emotional and functional significance. Although many investigations have observed deviating voice qualities in individuals who are prelingually deaf or profoundly hearing impaired, less is known regarding how older adults with acquired…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine which demographic, health-related, mood, personality, or social factors predict discrepancies between older adults' functional speech-in-noise test result and their self-reported hearing problems. Method: Data of 1,061 respondents from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam were used (ages ranged…

Purpose: The contribution of audible high-frequency information to speech-understanding performance in listeners with varying degrees of high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss was examined. Method: Thirty-six elderly hearing-impaired (EHI) and 24 young normal-hearing (YNH) listeners were tested in quiet (+20 dB speech-to-noise ratio [SNR]) and…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine the impact of age, gender, and race on the prevalence and severity of hearing loss in elder adults, aged 72-96 years, after accounting for income, education, smoking, and clinical and subclinical cardiovascular disease. Methods: Air-conduction thresholds for standard and extended high-frequency…

Purpose: To examine age-related differences in auditory speech recognition and visual text recognition performance for parallel sets of stimulus materials in the auditory and visual modalities. In addition, the effects of variation in rate of presentation of stimuli in each modality were investigated in each age group. Method: A mixed-model design…

This study examined practice effects and list differences on a test of central auditory processing, the Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test, with an ipsilateral competing message in 30 young and 20 elderly participants. Results indicated older adults required substantially more practice. Significant list differences were also found.…