Sālmand (Jan 2012)
Time Compressed Speech Perception in Elderly People
Abstract
Objectives: Most of the studies performed on aging and auditory system have historically focused on speech perception disorders in elderly people. According to studies, speech discrimination disorders in aged people usually result from auditory temporal processing impairment. Our study was done to determine the ability of aged people to discriminate time compressed speech. Methods & Materials: The Persian version of the time compressed speech test with 6 lists of monosyllabic words in 3 compression rates of 0, 40 and 60 percent was performed on 36 young adults with an age range of 18 to 30 years and 32 elderly people with an age range of 60 to 80 years with normal hearing in both genders monaurally. Results: In both groups, there was a significant difference between word discrimination scores in three compression rates. Also, a significant difference was shown between young and older adults in three compression rates (P<0.0001). No significant difference was found between the two ears and two genders in different compression rates. Conclusion: With the increase in the speed of speech stimuli, the word discrimination score decreases remarkably, and aging has noticeable effects on the processing of fast speech stimuli.
