CORRELATES OF SPEECH PERCEPTION BEHAVIORS IN PERSONS OVER FIFTY YEARS OF AGE (SIGNAL DETECTION THEORY).
Item
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Title
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CORRELATES OF SPEECH PERCEPTION BEHAVIORS IN PERSONS OVER FIFTY YEARS OF AGE (SIGNAL DETECTION THEORY).
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Identifier
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AAI8713769
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identifier
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8713769
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Creator
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KIRSCHNER-ZELLER, ROBIN TERRY.
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Contributor
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Louis J. G erstm an
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Audiology
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Abstract
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This study attempted to account for the wide variation in speech processing observed in elderly persons, wherein the performances of some listeners are indistinguishable from those of younger listeners while the performances of others reveal substantial declines.;In order to account for this variability, 52 men and women between the ages of 50 and 81 years were evaluated for a variety of demographic, cognitive and auditory factors including: sex, age, educational level, Duke Social Function Index, the Digit Symbol, Digit Span and Vocabulary subtests of the WAIS-R, pure tone thresholds ranging from 250 Hz to 8000 Hz, Speech Reception Threshold, and word recognition performance as measured by the W-22 Test. Taken together, these were the independent variables of this study.;To obtain dependent variables, the subjects were administered two Revised Speech Perception in Noise (R-SPIN) Tests, which intermingle High Predictability (HP) and Low Predictability (LP) items. Listeners responded to each stimulus verbally and with a numerical rating of their confidence on a 6-point scale. The combined measures permitted computation not only of an absolute score but also of three signal detection measures including d', self-assessment ability (A), and decision criterion (B). All four of these measures were computed separately for the HP and LP items. Errors on the LP items were subjected to a separate analysis.;It was found that almost no independent variables predicted to raw scores, and that education was the best predictor of signal detection measures. The only factor sensitive to Age was self-assessment (d' and A) in the LP items. The error analysis revealed a significant tendency for older listeners to seek more plausible contexts and use a narrower range of confidence ratings. When making an error, all subjects offered responses ten times more probable than the stimulus word. It was concluded that the elderly have a bias toward feasibility in listening to sentences that is not captured by standard signal detection measures.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Speech and Hearing Sciences
