COMPARISON OF GROWTH OF MASHING FUNCTIONS AND SPEECH-DISCRIMINATION ABILITIES IN YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS

This study examined the possibility that age-related differences in sp eech discrimination abilities may reflect individual differences in th e amount of masking and in the rate of growth of on- and off-frequency masking. Young (mean age = 26 years) and older (mean age = 60 years) adult listeners were selected, all of whom had hearing thresholds equa l to or better than 30 dB HL at audiometric frequencies less than or e qual to 2000 Hz and equal or better than 40 dB HL at audiometric frequ encies from 3000 to 6000 Hz. Listeners were tested on a consonant iden tification task in which nonsense words were presented in quiet, high- pass-filtered, low-pass-filtered and in wide-band noise. Despite their good hearing thresholds, the older listeners made significantly more errors in all four test conditions. Masked thresholds and growth of ma sking functions were obtained for all listeners at signal frequencies of 750, 1000, and 1500 Hz, in the presence of a one-third-octave band of noise centred at 1000 Hz, with four noise levels from 50 to 80 dB S PL. The older listeners had higher masked thresholds overall, when com pared to younger listeners, even though their audiometric thresholds a t these frequencies were within normal limits. However, the slope of t he growth of masking functions at and above the masker frequency did n ot differ with age. These results show that older listeners show reduc ed speech discrimination abilities both in difficult listening conditi ons and in quiet, even when their pure-tone thresholds are within norm al limits. Moreover, these effects cannot be attributed to differences in masked thresholds or in the rate of growth of masking.