LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 12 December 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.


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Cognition and Speech Perception in Noise

Rajesh Ranjan, MASLP, Jayashree Bhat, Ph.D. and
Ajith Kumar U. Ph.D.


Abstract

Background: Daily communication requires individual’s ability to understand speech in varying degrees of background noise. The normal hearing individuals usually does this with remarkable success without much problems even in even in adverse listening condition. However, elderly listeners exhibit difficulty in understanding speech, particularly in background noise or reverberation. It is unclear at present whether auditory or cognitive mechanisms responsible for reduced recognition ability in elderly listeners.

Methods: A total of 30 participants participated in the study. They were divided in to two groups (i) 15 young adults in the age range of 20-30 years (ii) 15 elderly participants in the age range of 50-65 years. All the participants had pure tone thresholds less than 25dBHL at octave frequencies Subsequently none of the selected participants had difficulty in understanding speech in daily listening conditions and had no recent history of otologic disease, history or presence of neurological symptoms. Min mental state examination and Speech in Noise test was administered to assess the cognitive abilities and speech perception ability in both the groups.

Result: Speech in noise perception abilities was similar in more favourable signal to noise ratio (SNRs) in both the groups. However, at higher SNRs (less favourable) elderly participants performed significantly poorer compared to young individuals.

Conclusion: We hypothesize that reduced temporal processing abilities in older individuals might have contributed to poor speech understanding abilities in elderly individuals.

Key words: Coginition, Mini mental state examination (MMSE), Speech in Noise(SIN), &Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR).

Cognition and speech perception in Noise

Daily communication requires individual’s ability to understand speech in varying degrees of background noise. The normal hearing individuals usually does this with remarkable success without much problems even in adverse listening condition (1). However, elderly listeners exhibit difficulty in understanding speech, particularly in background noise or reverberation (2-7). These speech understanding difficulties seen in elderly individuals may be because of decline in the auditory processing abilities (8) or decline in the cognitive abilities that are associated with the aging (9-10) .


This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Rajesh Ranjan, MASLP
Assistant Professor
Department of Audiology and SLP
Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore 575001
Karnataka, India
ranjanrajesh15@gmail.com

Jayashree Bhat, Ph.D. (Speech and Hearing)
Professor & HOD, Dept of Audiology and SLP
Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore 575001
Karnataka, India
Bhat.js@manipal.edu
Ajith Kumar U. Ph.D. (Speech and Hearing)
Reader in Department of Audiology
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Manasagangotri
Mysore 570 006
Karnataka, India
Ajithkumar18@gmail.com

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