Cantonese tone perception in noise in young and aged healthy adults

Abstract

Listening in noise is a common difficulty in elderly. This study aimed to compare the performance of young and aged adults with normal-hearing in Cantonese lexical tone perception in quiet and in noise. Two-male-talker babble, two-female-talker babble, speech-shaped noise and ten-talker babble were adopted to investigate the relative effect of energetic and informational masking. The effect of noise level was investigated by presenting the stimuli at signal-to-noise ratios of 0dB and -6dB. Twenty young and 20 aged adults who were healthy and native Cantonese speakers repeated the monosyllabic words they heard in different conditions. The experimenter rated the tones the listeners produced. Results showed that (1) two groups performed similarly in quiet but aged adults experienced greater difficulties in noise (2) both groups experienced similar difficulties when noise level increased (3) tone perception in noise with substantial amount of energetic and small amount of informational masking was more challenging than in noise with pure energetic masking, and that in large amount of informational masking was the least challenging (4) the masking effect of speech-shaped noise and ten-talker babble would be more prominent with increased noise level. This study also provided indications for further study by increasing noise levels.