TY - JOUR
T1 - Auditory-visual discourse comprehension by older and young adults in favorable and unfavorable conditions
AU - Tye-Murray, Nancy
AU - Sommers, Mitchell
AU - Spehar, Brent
AU - Myerson, Joel
AU - Hale, Sandra
AU - Rose, Nathan S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grant numbers 5R01AG022448 and 5R01AG018029. The authors thank Kalin Guebert and Julia Feld for their helpful suggestions.
PY - 2008/11
Y1 - 2008/11
N2 - This investigation examined how age and test condition affect one's ability to comprehend discourse passages, and determined whether age and test condition affect discourse comprehension and closed-set sentence recognition in a similar way. Young and older adults were tested with closed-set sentences from the newly-created build-a-sentence test (BAS) and a series of discourse passages in two audiovisual conditions: favorable, where the talker's head was clearly visible and the signal-to-babble ratio (SBR) was more optimal; and unfavorable, where the contrast sensitivity of the visual signal was reduced and the SBR was less optimal. The older participants recognized fewer words in the BAS than the young participants in both test conditions. Degrading the viewing and listening conditions led to a greater decline in their performance than in the young participants' performance. The older participants also did not perform as well at comprehending spoken discourse in the two test conditions. However, unlike the results from the BAS, the age difference for discourse comprehension was not exacerbated by unfavorable conditions. When attempting to comprehend discourse, older adults may draw upon verbal and cognitive abilities that are relatively insensitive to age.
AB - This investigation examined how age and test condition affect one's ability to comprehend discourse passages, and determined whether age and test condition affect discourse comprehension and closed-set sentence recognition in a similar way. Young and older adults were tested with closed-set sentences from the newly-created build-a-sentence test (BAS) and a series of discourse passages in two audiovisual conditions: favorable, where the talker's head was clearly visible and the signal-to-babble ratio (SBR) was more optimal; and unfavorable, where the contrast sensitivity of the visual signal was reduced and the SBR was less optimal. The older participants recognized fewer words in the BAS than the young participants in both test conditions. Degrading the viewing and listening conditions led to a greater decline in their performance than in the young participants' performance. The older participants also did not perform as well at comprehending spoken discourse in the two test conditions. However, unlike the results from the BAS, the age difference for discourse comprehension was not exacerbated by unfavorable conditions. When attempting to comprehend discourse, older adults may draw upon verbal and cognitive abilities that are relatively insensitive to age.
KW - Aging
KW - Audiovisual speech recognition
KW - Closed-set sentence test
KW - Discourse comprehension
KW - Lip-reading
KW - Speech-reading
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=56549122897&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14992020802301662
DO - 10.1080/14992020802301662
M3 - Article
C2 - 19012110
AN - SCOPUS:56549122897
SN - 1499-2027
VL - 47
SP - S31-S37
JO - International Journal of Audiology
JF - International Journal of Audiology
IS - SUPPL. 2
ER -