RECOGNITION OF MULTIPLY DEGRADED SPEECH BY YOUNG AND ELDERLY LISTENERS

This study investigated the hypothesis that age effects exert an incre ased influence on speech recognition performance as the number of acou stic degradations of the speech signal increases. Four groups particip ated: young listeners with normal hearing, elderly listeners with norm al hearing, young listeners with hearing loss, and elderly listeners w ith hearing loss. Recognition was assessed for sentence materials degr aded by noise, reverberation, or time compression, either in isolation or in binary combinations. Performance scores were converted to an eq uivalent signal-to-noise ratio index to facilitate direct comparison o f the effects of different forms of stimulus degradation. Age effects were observed primarily in multiple degradation conditions featuring t ime compression of the stimuli. These results are discussed in terms o f a postulated change in functional signal-to-noise ratio with increas ing age.