Rapid adaptation to time-compressed speech in young and older adults
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Ma’ayan Simhony
Abstract
Background: The ability of human listeners to comprehend rapid speech improves quickly with experience, a process known as adaptation. Whether inefficient adaptation to rapid speech partially accounts for the marked difficulties of older listeners with rapid speech is not clear.
Methods: Two conditions of adaptation to time-compressed speech were used. A baseline condition intended to test the hypothesis that adaptation is different in older and younger listeners, and an interference condition in which sentences compressed to two different rates were interleaved. Identification accuracy was compared between two time points (before and after adaptation) and between older and younger listeners.
Results: The effects of adaptation did not differ between younger and older listeners in either adaptation condition.
Conclusions: It seems that once initial performance differences are taken into account, rapid adaptation to time-compressed speech is as effective and as immune to interference by competing speech rates in younger and older adults.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Institute of Psychobiology in Israel. Ma’ayan Simchony and Michal Grinberg conducted the study as part of an undergraduate research project. Both contributed equally to the study.
Conflict of interest statement
Authors’ conflict of interest disclosure: The authors stated that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article. Research support played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.
Research funding: None declared.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
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©2014 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Israel Society for Auditory Research (ISAR): 2014 Annual Scientific Conference
- Mini Review
- Investigation of the mechanism of soft tissue conduction explains several perplexing auditory phenomena
- Original Articles
- The mechanism of direct stimulation of the cochlea by vibrating the round window
- Auditory-evoked cortical activity: contribution of brain noise, phase locking, and spectral power
- Rapid adaptation to time-compressed speech in young and older adults
- Apparent phenotypic anticipation in autosomal dominant connexin 26 deafness
- The effect of gender on a frequency discrimination task in children
- Auditory Behavior in Everyday Life (ABEL) questionnaire in Hebrew and in Arabic and its association with clinical tests in cochlear-implanted children
- Short-term learning effect in different psychoacoustic measures
- How difficult is difficult? Speech perception in noise in the elderly hearing impaired
- Congress Abstracts
- Israel Society for Auditory Research (ISAR) 2014 Annual Scientific Conference
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Israel Society for Auditory Research (ISAR): 2014 Annual Scientific Conference
- Mini Review
- Investigation of the mechanism of soft tissue conduction explains several perplexing auditory phenomena
- Original Articles
- The mechanism of direct stimulation of the cochlea by vibrating the round window
- Auditory-evoked cortical activity: contribution of brain noise, phase locking, and spectral power
- Rapid adaptation to time-compressed speech in young and older adults
- Apparent phenotypic anticipation in autosomal dominant connexin 26 deafness
- The effect of gender on a frequency discrimination task in children
- Auditory Behavior in Everyday Life (ABEL) questionnaire in Hebrew and in Arabic and its association with clinical tests in cochlear-implanted children
- Short-term learning effect in different psychoacoustic measures
- How difficult is difficult? Speech perception in noise in the elderly hearing impaired
- Congress Abstracts
- Israel Society for Auditory Research (ISAR) 2014 Annual Scientific Conference
