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Factors Affecting Speech Understanding in Older Adults

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The Aging Auditory System

Part of the book series: Springer Handbook of Auditory Research ((SHAR,volume 34))

Abstract

This chapter reviews various factors that affect the speech-understanding abilities of older adults. Before proceeding to the identification of several such factors, however, it is important to clearly define what is meant by “speech understanding.” This term is used to refer to either the open-set recognition or the closed-set identification of nonsense syllables, words, or sentences by human listeners. Many years ago, Miller et al. (1951) demonstrated that the distinction between open-set recognition and closed-set identification blurs as the set size for closed-set identification increases. When words were used as the speech material, Miller et al. (1951) demonstrated that the closed-set speech-identification performance of young normal-hearing listeners progressively approached that of open-set speech recognition as the set size doubled in successive steps from 2 to 256 words. Clopper et al. (2006) have also demonstrated that lexical factors (e.g., word frequency and acoustic-phonetic similarity) impacting word identification and word recognition are very similar when the set size is reasonably large for the closed-set identification task and the alternatives in the response are reasonably confusable with the stimulus item. Thus the processes of closed-set speech identification and open-set speech recognition are considered to be very similar and both are referred to here as measures of “speech understanding.”

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported, in part, by National Institutes of Health Grants AG 008293 and AG 022334 from the National Institute on Aging (LEH) and Grants DC 00184 and DC 00422 (JRD) from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. We also thank Jayne B. Ahlstrom for her feedback on earlier drafts of the chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, 200 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington, IN, 47405-7002, USA

    Larry E. Humes

  2. Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, 135 Rutledge Avenue, MSC 550, Charleston, SC, 29525–5500, USA

    Judy R. Dubno

Authors
  1. Larry E. Humes
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  2. Judy R. Dubno
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Correspondence to Larry E. Humes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Hearing & Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, Lefrak Hall 0100 , College Park, 20742, U.S.A.

    Sandra Gordon-Salant

  2. Medical Center, University of Rochester, Elmwood Avenue 601, Rochester, 14642, U.S.A.

    Robert D. Frisina

  3. Dept. Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742-4415, U.S.A.

    Arthur N. Popper

  4. Parmly Hearing Inst., Loyola University Chicago, N. Sheridan Rd. 6525, Chicago, 60626, U.S.A.

    Richard R. Fay

Additional information

This chapter is dedicated to Donald D. Dirks, a wonderful mentor who contributed to the development of the research careers of both authors and helped to shape the ideas contained therein.

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Humes, L.E., Dubno, J.R. (2010). Factors Affecting Speech Understanding in Older Adults. In: Gordon-Salant, S., Frisina, R., Popper, A., Fay, R. (eds) The Aging Auditory System. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 34. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0993-0_8

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