TY - JOUR
T1 - Detecting and learning new words
T2 - The impact of advancing age and hearing loss
AU - Pittman, Andrea
AU - Stewart, Elizabeth C.
AU - Odgear, Ian S.
AU - Willman, Amanda P.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for this project was received through a grant awarded to the first author from the Hearing Industry Research Consortium. We are grateful to the staff and students working in the Pediatric Amplification Laboratory at Arizona State University, including Ashley Wright and Emily Venskytis, as well as the generous support, expertise, and resources of Stefan Launer, Brent Edwards, Graham Naylor, Joel Beilin, Andrew Dittberner, and Lars Sunesen. The authors would also like to thank the children and adults who took time out of their busy schedules to participate in this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/9
Y1 - 2017/9
N2 - Purpose: Lexical acquisition was examined in children and adults to determine if the skills needed to detect and learn new words are retained in the adult years. In addition to advancing age, the effects of hearing loss were also examined. Method: Measures of word recognition, detection of nonsense words within sentences, and novel word learning were obtained in quiet for 20 children with normal hearing and 21 with hearing loss (8–12 years) as well as for 15 adults with normal hearing and 17 with hearing loss (58–79 years). Listeners with hearing loss were tested with and without high-frequency acoustic energy to identify the type of amplification (narrowband, wideband, or frequency lowering) that yielded optimal performance. Results: No differences were observed between the adults and children with normal hearing except for the adults’ better nonsense word detection. The poorest performance was observed for the listeners with hearing loss in the unaided condition. Performance improved significantly with amplification to levels at or near that of their counterparts with normal hearing. With amplification, the adults performed as well as the children on all tasks except for word recognition. Conclusions: Adults retain the skills necessary for lexical acquisition regardless of hearing status. However, uncorrected hearing loss nearly eliminates these skills.
AB - Purpose: Lexical acquisition was examined in children and adults to determine if the skills needed to detect and learn new words are retained in the adult years. In addition to advancing age, the effects of hearing loss were also examined. Method: Measures of word recognition, detection of nonsense words within sentences, and novel word learning were obtained in quiet for 20 children with normal hearing and 21 with hearing loss (8–12 years) as well as for 15 adults with normal hearing and 17 with hearing loss (58–79 years). Listeners with hearing loss were tested with and without high-frequency acoustic energy to identify the type of amplification (narrowband, wideband, or frequency lowering) that yielded optimal performance. Results: No differences were observed between the adults and children with normal hearing except for the adults’ better nonsense word detection. The poorest performance was observed for the listeners with hearing loss in the unaided condition. Performance improved significantly with amplification to levels at or near that of their counterparts with normal hearing. With amplification, the adults performed as well as the children on all tasks except for word recognition. Conclusions: Adults retain the skills necessary for lexical acquisition regardless of hearing status. However, uncorrected hearing loss nearly eliminates these skills.
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U2 - 10.1044/2017_AJA-17-0025
DO - 10.1044/2017_AJA-17-0025
M3 - Article
C2 - 28834533
AN - SCOPUS:85029692283
VL - 26
SP - 318
EP - 327
JO - American Journal of Audiology
JF - American Journal of Audiology
SN - 1059-0889
IS - 3
ER -