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Abstract

Older listeners are more affected than younger listeners by background noise. In this study, we examined which perceptual and cognitive abilities contribute to older listeners‘ individual differences in recognizing speech in various listening conditions. Unlike in previous studies, we tested older adults in a speeded-response task where processing time, and hence post-perceptual processing, was limited. Sixty-six older adults with varying degrees of hearing loss were asked to press a button when they detected the phoneme ‗p‘ in meaningful sentences. Accuracy and response speed were to be maximized. The to-be-monitored speech stream was presented alone or with an informational masker (single-speaker noise) or an energetic masker (matched speech-shaped noise). Target detection was affected by both types of noise. Detections were slower and less accurate in the informational than in the energetic masking condition. Results of testing hearing acuity, temporal processing, attentional abilities, and working memory as predictors will be discussed.