Abstract
This present study investigated spoken sentence processing as a function of age and a variety of hearing acuities via a self-paced listening paradigm. Young adults and older adults with clinically normal hearing and with mild-to-moderate hearing loss, self-paced through spoken sentences using an auditory moving window technique. Sentences varied in syntactic complexity (subject-relative, objective-relative) and sound level of presentation (high, low). Accuracies and mean pause durations were recorded. An omnibus ANOVA revealed significant main effects of sound level, sentence type and segment position. These effects were moderated by a significant Sentence Type X Segment Position X Age interaction. Results were taken as support of syntactic knowledge preserved in normal aging. Furthermore, we found that a low sound level of 15 dB above individual's speech-reception threshold produced comparable pacing patterns to a conversational speaking level. However, results showed that in the low sound level condition participants increased their mean pause times. In addition, in the low sound level, comprehension accuracies suffered for older adults with poor hearing.