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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Sarah Knight
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by American Psychological Association, 2021.
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© 2021 American Psychological Association. Listening to speech in adverse conditions can be challenging and effortful, especially for older adults. This study examined age-related differences in effortful listening by recording changes in the task-evoked pupil response (TEPR; a physiological marker of listening effort) both at the level of sentence processing and over the entire course of a listening task. A total of 65 (32 young adults, 33 older adults) participants performed a speech recognition task in the presence of a competing talker, while moment-to-moment changes in pupil size were continuously monitored. Participants were also administered the Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale, a questionnaire assessing daily life listening-related fatigue within four domains (social, cognitive, emotional, physical). Normalized TEPRs were overall larger and more steeply rising and falling around the peak in the older versus the young adult group during sentence processing. Additionally, mean TEPRs over the course of the listening task were more stable in the older versus the young adult group, consistent with a more sustained recruitment of compensatory attentional resources to maintain task performance. No age-related differences were found in terms of total daily life listening-related fatigue; however, older adults reported higher scores than young adults within the social domain. Overall, this study provides evidence for qualitatively distinct patterns of physiological arousal between young and older adults consistent with age-related upregulation in resource allocation during listening. A more detailed understanding of age-related changes in the subjective and physiological mechanisms that underlie effortful listening will ultimately help to address complex communication needs in aging listeners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Author(s): McGarrigle R, Knight S, Rakusen L, Geller J, Mattys S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Psychology and Aging
Year: 2021
Volume: 36
Issue: 4
Pages: 504-519
Print publication date: 01/06/2021
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
Date deposited: 04/12/2024
ISSN (print): 0882-7974
ISSN (electronic): 1939-1498
Publisher: American Psychological Association
URL: https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000587
DOI: 10.1037/pag0000587
PubMed id: 34014746
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