Winter Storm Lunch talk: Sandra Gordon-Salant (HESP)

"Effects of listener age on the perception of Spanish-accented English"

Among the many communication challenges that older listeners experience is difficulty understanding accented English.  The problem may arise from a number of factors, including age-related hearing loss, cognitive decline, and central factors such as deficits in auditory temporal processing.  The hypothesis is offered that Spanish-accented English alters the timing characteristics of speech at the segmental and suprasegmental levels, rendering the bottom-up task of processing the distorted signal through the older listener’s impaired auditory system quite difficult.  Results of several recent studies will be presented in which effects of age and hearing loss were prominent in the perception of Spanish-accented words and sentences, presented in quiet and noise backgrounds.  The principal listener, talker, and environmental factors contributing to the observed findings will be considered.