Temporal discrimination was measured using a gap discrimination paradigm for three groups of listeners with normal hearing: (1) ages 18–30, (2) ages 40–52, and (3) ages 62–74 years. Normal hearing was defined as pure-tone thresholds HL from 250 to 6000 Hz and HL at 8000 Hz. Silent gaps were placed between -octave bands of noise centered at one of six frequencies. The noise band markers were paired so that the center frequency of the leading marker was fixed at 2000 Hz, and the center frequency of the trailing marker varied randomly across experimental runs. Gap duration discrimination was significantly poorer for older listeners than for young and middle-aged listeners, and the performance of the young and middle-aged listeners did not differ significantly. Age group differences were more apparent for the more frequency-disparate stimuli (2000-Hz leading marker followed by a 500-Hz trailing marker) than for the fixed-frequency stimuli (2000-Hz lead and 2000-Hz trail). The gap duration difference limens of the older listeners increased more rapidly with frequency disparity than those of the other listeners. Because age effects were more apparent for the more frequency-disparate conditions, and gap discrimination was not affected by differences in hearing sensitivity among listeners, it is suggested that gap discrimination depends upon temporal mechanisms that deteriorate with age and stimulus complexity but are unaffected by hearing loss.
REFERENCES
1.
Collyer
, C.
(1974
). “The detection of a temporal gap between two disparate stimuli
,” Percept. Psychophys.
16
, 96
–100
.2.
DeFilippo
, C.
, and Snell
, K.
(1986
). “Detection of a temporal gap in low-frequency narrow-band signals by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
80
, 1354
–1358
.3.
Divenyi
, P.
, and Danner
, W.
(1977
). “Discrimination of time intervals marked by brief acoustic pulses of various intensities and spectra
,” Percept. Psychophys.
21
, 125
–142
.4.
Divenyi
, P.
, and Haupt
, K.
(1997
). “Audiological correlates of speech understanding deficits in elderly listeners with mild-to-moderate hearing loss III: Factor representation
,” Ear Hear.
18
, 189
–201
.5.
Dreschler
, W.
, and Plomp
, R.
(1985
). “Relations between psychophysical data and speech perception for hearing impaired subjects II
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
78
, 1261
–1270
.6.
Fitzgibbons
, P.
, and Gordon-Salant
, S.
(1987
). “Minimum stimulus levels for temporal gap resolution in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
81
, 1542
–1545
.7.
Fitzgibbons
, P.
, and Gordon-Salant
, S.
(1994
). “Age effects on measures of auditory duration discrimination
,” J. Speech Hear. Res.
37
, 662
–670
.8.
Fitzgibbons
, P.
, and Gordon-Salant
, S.
(1995
). “Age effects on duration discrimination with simple and complex stimuli
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
98
, 3140
–3145
.9.
Fitzgibbons
, P.
, and Wightman
, F.
(1982
). “Gap detection in normal and hearing-impaired listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
72
, 761
–765
.10.
Fitzgibbons
, P.
, Pollatsek
, A.
, and Thomas
, I.
(1974
). “Detection of temporal gaps within and between perceptual tonal groups
,” Percept. Psychophys.
16
, 522
–528
.11.
Florentine
, M.
, and Buus
, S.
(1984
). “Temporal gap detection in sensorineural and simulated hearing impairments
,” J. Speech Hear. Res.
27
, 449
–455
.12.
Formby
, C.
, and Muir
, K.
(1989
). “Effects of randomizing signal level and duration on temporal gap detection
,” Audiology
28
, 250
–257
.13.
Formby
, C.
, Barker
, C.
, Abbey
, H.
, and Raney
, J. J.
(1993
). “Detection of silent temporal gaps between narrow-band noise markers having second-formantlike properties of voiceless stop/vowel combinations
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
93
, 1023
–1027
.14.
Formby
, C.
, Gerber
, M.
, Sherlock
, L.
, and Magder
, L.
(1998
). “Evidence for an across-frequency, between-channel process in asymptotic monaural temporal gap detection
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
103
, 3554
–3560
.15.
Gordon-Salant
, S.
, and Fitzgibbons
, P.
(1993
). “Temporal factors and speech recognition performance in young and elderly listeners
,” J. Speech Hear. Res.
36
, 1276
–1285
.16.
Gordon-Salant
, S.
, and Fitzgibbons
, P.
(1999
). “Profile of auditory temporal processing in older listeners
,” J. Speech Hear. Res.
42
, 300
–311
.17.
Grose
, J.
, and Hall
, J.
(1996
). “Perceptual organization of sequential stimuli in listeners with cochlear hearing loss
,” J. Speech Hear. Res.
39
, 1149
–1158
.18.
Grose
, J.
, Hall
, J.
, Buss
, E.
, and Hatch
, D.
(2001
). “Gap detection for similar and dissimilar gap markers
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
109
, 1587
–1595
.19.
He
, N.
, Horwitz
, A.
, Dubno
, J.
, and Mills
, J.
(1999
). “Psychometric functions for gap detection in noise measured from young and aged subjects
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
106
, 966
–978
.20.
Kinney
, J.
(1961
). “Discrimination in auditory and visual patterns
,” Am. J. Psychol.
74
, 529
–541
.21.
Klein
, A.
, Mills
, J.
, and Adkins
, W.
(1990
). “Upward spread of masking, hearing loss, and speech recognition in young and elderly listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
87
, 1266
–1271
.22.
Levitt
, H.
(1971
). “Transformed up-down methods in psychoacoustics
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
49
, 467
–477
.23.
Lister
, J.
, Koehnke
, J.
, and Besing
, J.
(2000
). “Binaural gap duration discrimination in listeners with impaired hearing and normal hearing
,” Ear Hear.
21
, 141
–150
.24.
Moore
, B.
, Peters
, R.
, and Glasberg
, B.
(1992
). “Detection of temporal gaps in sinusoids by elderly subjects with and without hearing loss
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
92
, 1923
–1932
.25.
Neff
, D.
, Jesteadt
, W.
, and Brown
, E.
(1982
). “The relation between gap discrimination and auditory stream segregation
,” Percept. Psychophys.
31
, 493
–501
.26.
Oxenham
, A.
(2000
). “Influence of spatial and temporal coding on auditory gap detection
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
107
, 2215
–2223
.27.
Patterson
, R.
, Nimmo-Smith
, I.
, Weber
, D.
, and Milroy
, R.
(1982
). “The deterioration of hearing with age: frequency selectivity, the critical ratio, the audiogram, and speech threshold
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
72
, 1788
–1803
.28.
Phillips
, D.
, Taylor
, T.
, Hall
, S.
, Carr
, M.
, and Mossop
, J. E.
(1997
). “Detection of silent intervals between noises activating different perceptual channels: some properties of “central” auditory gap detection
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
101
, 3694
–3705
.29.
Price
, P.
, and Simon
, H.
(1984
). “Perception of temporal differences in speech by normal-hearing adults: effects of age and intensity
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
76
, 405
–410
.30.
Schneider
, B.
, and Hamstra
, S.
(1999
). “Gap detection thresholds as a function of tonal duration for younger and older listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
106
, 371
–380
.31.
Schneider
, B.
, Pichora-Fuller
, M.
, Kowalchuk
, D.
, and Lamb
, M.
(1994
). “Gap detection and the precedence effect in young and old adults
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
95
, 980
–991
.32.
Shannon
, R.
, and Otto
, S.
(1990
). “Psychophysical measures from electrical stimulation of the human cochlear nucleus
,” Hear. Res.
47
, 159
–168
.33.
Snell
, K.
(1997
). “Age-related changes in temporal gap detection
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
101
, 2214
–2220
.34.
Snell
, K.
, and Frisina
, D.
(2000
). “Relationships among age-related differences in gap detection and word recognition
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
107
, 1615
–1626
.35.
Snell
, K.
, Ison
, J.
, and Frisina
, D.
(1994
). “The effects of signal frequency and absolute bandwidth on gap detection in noise
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
96
, 1458
–1464
.36.
Sommers
, M.
, and Humes
, L.
(1993
). “Auditory filter shapes in normal-hearing, noise-masked normal, and elderly listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
93
, 2903
–2449
.37.
Strouse
, A.
, Ashmead
, D.
, Ohde
, R.
, and Grantham
, W.
(1998
). “Temporal processing in the aging auditory system
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
104
, 2385
–2399
.38.
Tyler
, R.
, Summerfield
, Q.
, Wood
, E.
, and Fernandes
, M.
(1982
). “Psychoacoustic and phonetic temporal processing in normal and hearing impaired listeners
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
72
, 740
–752
.39.
van Rooij
, J.
, and Plomp
, R.
(1990
). “Auditive and cognitive factors in speech perception by elderly listeners II. Multivariate analyses
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
88
, 2611
–2624
.40.
Williams
, K.
, and Elfner
, L.
(1976
). “Gap detection with three auditory events: A single-channel process
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
60
, 423
–428
.41.
Williams
, K.
, and Perrott
, D.
(1972
). “Temporal resolution of tonal pulses
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
51
, 644
–647
.42.
Working Group on Speech Understanding and Aging, National Research Council, Committee on Hearing, Bioacoustics, and Biomechanics (1988). “Speech understanding and aging,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, 859–895.
This content is only available via PDF.
© 2002 Acoustical Society of America.
2002
Acoustical Society of America
You do not currently have access to this content.
