Arousal state fluctuations are a source of internal noise underlying age-related declines in speech intelligibility.

ABSTRACT: Understanding speech in noisy, multi-talker environments is crucial for social communication but becomes increasingly challenging and frustrating as we age. Here, we simulated the acoustic challenges of multi-talker listening and found that adults over 50 years old (N = 76) recognized speech more slowly, less accurately, and less consistently than younger adults (N = 107). While peripheral hearing status accounted for average differences in speech intelligibility by age, it did not account for moment-to-moment variability in speed and accuracy - fluctuations central to the frustration experienced by older listeners in challenging environments. We hypothesized that age-related changes in brain arousal systems might account for the fluctuant "noise" in speech processing observed in older lis

SUBMITTER: Smith SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12247730 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature