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Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment

In spite of the rapidity of everyday speech, older adults tend to keep up relatively well in day-to-day listening. In laboratory settings older adults do not respond as quickly as younger adults in off-line tests of sentence comprehension, but the question is whether comprehension itself is actually...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ayasse, Nicole D., Lash, Amanda, Wingfield, Arthur
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28119598
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00329
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author Ayasse, Nicole D.
Lash, Amanda
Wingfield, Arthur
author_facet Ayasse, Nicole D.
Lash, Amanda
Wingfield, Arthur
author_sort Ayasse, Nicole D.
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description In spite of the rapidity of everyday speech, older adults tend to keep up relatively well in day-to-day listening. In laboratory settings older adults do not respond as quickly as younger adults in off-line tests of sentence comprehension, but the question is whether comprehension itself is actually slower. Two unique features of the human eye were used to address this question. First, we tracked eye-movements as 20 young adults and 20 healthy older adults listened to sentences that referred to one of four objects pictured on a computer screen. Although the older adults took longer to indicate the referenced object with a cursor-pointing response, their gaze moved to the correct object as rapidly as that of the younger adults. Second, we concurrently measured dilation of the pupil of the eye as a physiological index of effort. This measure revealed that although poorer hearing acuity did not slow processing, success came at the cost of greater processing effort.
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spelling pubmed-52228782017-01-24 Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment Ayasse, Nicole D. Lash, Amanda Wingfield, Arthur Front Aging Neurosci Neuroscience In spite of the rapidity of everyday speech, older adults tend to keep up relatively well in day-to-day listening. In laboratory settings older adults do not respond as quickly as younger adults in off-line tests of sentence comprehension, but the question is whether comprehension itself is actually slower. Two unique features of the human eye were used to address this question. First, we tracked eye-movements as 20 young adults and 20 healthy older adults listened to sentences that referred to one of four objects pictured on a computer screen. Although the older adults took longer to indicate the referenced object with a cursor-pointing response, their gaze moved to the correct object as rapidly as that of the younger adults. Second, we concurrently measured dilation of the pupil of the eye as a physiological index of effort. This measure revealed that although poorer hearing acuity did not slow processing, success came at the cost of greater processing effort. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5222878/ /pubmed/28119598 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00329 Text en Copyright © 2017 Ayasse, Lash and Wingfield. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Ayasse, Nicole D.
Lash, Amanda
Wingfield, Arthur
Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title_full Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title_fullStr Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title_full_unstemmed Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title_short Effort Not Speed Characterizes Comprehension of Spoken Sentences by Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment
title_sort effort not speed characterizes comprehension of spoken sentences by older adults with mild hearing impairment
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28119598
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00329
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