Auditory temporal order perception in younger and older adults

Author(s): GordonSalant, S.

Journal/Book: J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1998; 41: 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852-3279. Amer Speech-Language-Hearing Assoc. 1052-1060.

Abstract: This investigation examined the abilities of younger and older listeners to discriminate and identify temporal order of sounds presented in tonal sequences. It was hypothesized that older listeners would exhibit greater difficulty than younger listeners on both temporal processing tasks, particularly for complex stimulus patterns. It was also anticipated that tone order discrimination would be easier than tone order identification for all listeners. Listeners were younger and older adults with either normal hearing or mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing losses. Stimuli were temporally contiguous three-tone sequences within a 1/3 octave frequency range centered at 4000 Hz. For the discrimination task, listeners discerned differences between standard and comparison stimulus sequences that varied in tonal temporal order. For the identification cask, listeners identified tone order of a single sequence using labels of relative pitch. Older listeners performed more poorly than younger listeners an the discrimination task far the more complex pitch patterns and on the identification task for faster stimulus presentation rates. The results also showed that order discrimination is easier than order identification for all listeners. The effects of hearing loss on the ordering tasks were minimal.

Note: Article GordonSalant S, Univ Maryland, Dept Speech & Hearing Sci, College Pk,MD 20742 USA

Keyword(s): auditory temporal processing; temporal order discrimination; temporal order identification; age-related processes; SPEECH RECOGNITION PERFORMANCE; DURATION DISCRIMINATION; ELDERLY LISTENERS; GAP DETECTION; HEARING-LOSS; IDENTIFICATION; SEQUENCES

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