Articulation Rate in Adverse Listening Conditions in Younger and Older Adults

Speech communication becomes increasingly difficult with age, especially in adverse listening conditions. We compared speech adaptations made by ‘older adult’ (65-84 years) and ‘younger adult’ (19-26 years) talkers when speech is produced with communicative intent. The aim was to investigate how articulation rate is affected by the type of adverse listening condition and by the change in task demands. Articulation rate was recorded in 35 older and 18 younger adult talkers when they were reading and repeating BKB-sentences and when they were doing an interactive ‘spot-the-difference’ game in a good and three adverse listening conditions (Hearing Loss Simulation, one speaker in noise, both speakers in noise). Similar to younger adults, older adults reduced their articulation rate in the cognitively simpler sentence repetition task in response to adverse conditions. However, in spontaneous speech, only older adult women decreased their articulation rate to counter the effect of the adverse conditions to the same degree as the younger adult talkers. Older men did not reduce their articulation rate in any of the three adverse conditions. These sex differences were not due to differences in the task difficulty experienced by men and women nor were they associated with sensory or cognitive factors.