Examination of speech perception and cognitive functioning in the elderly

Elderly persons frequently complain about problems with speech understanding especially in complex acoustic situations. Besides hearing impairment the decline of cognitive functions might explain these problems. In 12 normal hearing young subjects and 14 elderly listeners with extraordinarily good hearing speech perception was measured in a broad range of different acoustic situations. Cognitive functioning was evaluated with different neuropsychological tests. Despite comparable pure tone thresholds the elderly listeners revealed worse speech discrimination than the young subjects in almost all test situations. Largest differences were found in situations with fluctuating maskers and competing talkers. Most of the speech perception results revealed significant correlations with the outcome from a neuropsychological test addressing declarative verbal memory. In complex listening situations elderly persons reveal worse speech understanding than younger subjects. Differences in speech perception can partly be attributed to cognitive abilities. In particular, working memory seems to be an important factor.