Older Adults Are Better at Listening Than You Think



Contrary to popular belief, older persons may have improved hearing in noisy social settings.

Ever sneer when your grandmother asks you to help clear the table after a meal with the family or gripe when your grandfather cheats during a competitive game of gin rummy? Given the likelihood that people can hear you more clearly than you realize, you might wish to talk less loudly.

According to recent studies from Baycrest and Western University, older people may have better hearing in noisy environments than previously believed. Whether it's at a packed restaurant or a crowded family gathering, older folks may enjoy and process conversations better than earlier research have suggested. If this were to be true, it would improve their quality of life and give them the chance to meaningfully interact with people who are going through similar things, which would reduce their risk of developing dementia as social isolation is a risk factor for cognitive decline.

Scientists have long hypothesized that older persons appear to be less able to use speech "glimpses" than younger adults, which involve exploiting the speech one can hear more clearly during brief reductions in background noise to better understand conversations in noisy surroundings.

The Baycrest-Western University study suggests, however, that this may not hold true for speech that is more like human speech and may only hold true for the fairly uninteresting, jumbled, and unnatural sentences that are frequently used in laboratory settings. In other words, it might be simpler than previously thought for older persons to hear speech in noisy settings.

Younger and older adult participants in the study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports, listened to captivating stories or disjointed words without a clear topic, such as "Smoky fires lack flame and heat." Two different types of background noise were provided by the researchers: one that fluctuated in level to allow for glances and one that did not. The speech and background noise were frequently interrupted by the researchers, who then asked the subjects to describe in detail what they had heard. The number of words that were correctly interpreted was then calculated by the researchers.

They discovered that older persons profited from speech glimpses as much as, if not more than, younger adults did for more natural speech that resembles speaking in everyday life, such as storytelling. When listening to fragmented sentences, however, they profited less.

These findings imply that older persons can be more adept at hearing in noisy social environments than previously believed. The significance of cognitive and motivational elements for speech understanding is further highlighted by our study. Senior author of this study and Baycrest's Canada Research Chair in Auditory Aging, Dr. Björn Herrmann notes that older persons who struggle with listening skills in a lab context may perform better in real-world situations.

With greater funding, Dr. Herrmann and his team could research why natural speech, as opposed to isolated laboratory sentences, benefits older persons' hearing more, as well as how natural speech might be utilized more frequently in clinical practice to test older adults' hearing.                                                            
Reference: Vanessa C. Irsik, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, and Björn Herrmann, "Age-related deficiencies in dip-listening visible for isolated lines but not for spoken narrative," Scientific Reports, 7 April 2022.

By BAYCREST CENTRE FOR GERIATRIC CARE 

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