TY - JOUR
T1 - Age-related differences in inhibitory control predict audiovisual speech perception
AU - Dey, Avanti
AU - Sommers, Mitchell S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - Audiovisual (AV) speech perception is the process by which auditory and visual sensory signals are integrated and used to understand what a talker is saying during face-to-face communication. This form of communication is markedly superior to speech perception in either sensory modality alone. However, there are additional lexical factors that are affected by age-related cognitive changes that may contribute to differences in AV perception. In the current study, we extended an existing model of spoken word identification to the AV domain, and examined the cognitive factors that contribute to age-related and individual differences in AV perception of words varying in lexical difficulty (i.e., on the basis of competing items). Young (n - 49) and older adults (n - 50) completed a series of cognitive inhibition tasks and a spoken word identification task. The words were presented in auditory-only, visual-only, and AV conditions, and were equally divided into lexically hard (words with many competitors) and lexically easy (words with few competitors). Overall, young adults demonstrated better inhibitory abilities and higher identification performance than older adults. However, whereas no relationship was observed between inhibitory abilities and AV word identification performance in young adults, there was a significant relationship between Stroop interference and AV identification of lexically hard words in older adults. These results are interpreted within the framework of existing models of spoken-word recognition with implications for how cognitive deficits in older adults contribute to speech perception.
AB - Audiovisual (AV) speech perception is the process by which auditory and visual sensory signals are integrated and used to understand what a talker is saying during face-to-face communication. This form of communication is markedly superior to speech perception in either sensory modality alone. However, there are additional lexical factors that are affected by age-related cognitive changes that may contribute to differences in AV perception. In the current study, we extended an existing model of spoken word identification to the AV domain, and examined the cognitive factors that contribute to age-related and individual differences in AV perception of words varying in lexical difficulty (i.e., on the basis of competing items). Young (n - 49) and older adults (n - 50) completed a series of cognitive inhibition tasks and a spoken word identification task. The words were presented in auditory-only, visual-only, and AV conditions, and were equally divided into lexically hard (words with many competitors) and lexically easy (words with few competitors). Overall, young adults demonstrated better inhibitory abilities and higher identification performance than older adults. However, whereas no relationship was observed between inhibitory abilities and AV word identification performance in young adults, there was a significant relationship between Stroop interference and AV identification of lexically hard words in older adults. These results are interpreted within the framework of existing models of spoken-word recognition with implications for how cognitive deficits in older adults contribute to speech perception.
KW - Aging
KW - Inhibition
KW - Speech perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940898870&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/pag0000033
DO - 10.1037/pag0000033
M3 - Article
C2 - 26121287
AN - SCOPUS:84940898870
SN - 0882-7974
VL - 30
SP - 634
EP - 646
JO - Psychology and Aging
JF - Psychology and Aging
IS - 3
ER -