Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults
Within a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech re...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2014-09-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00628/full |
| _version_ | 1819138055378829312 |
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| author | Thordis Marisa Neger Thordis Marisa Neger Toni eRietveld Esther eJanse Esther eJanse |
| author_facet | Thordis Marisa Neger Thordis Marisa Neger Toni eRietveld Esther eJanse Esther eJanse |
| author_sort | Thordis Marisa Neger |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Within a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech relates to statistical learning, as sensitivity to probabilistic information may aid identification of relevant cues in novel speech input. If statistical learning and perceptual learning (partly) draw on the same general mechanisms, then statistical learning in a non-auditory modality using non-linguistic sequences should predict adaptation to degraded speech.In the present study, 73 older adults (aged over 60 years) and 60 younger adults (aged between 18 and 30 years) performed a visual artificial grammar learning task and were presented with sixty meaningful noise-vocoded sentences in an auditory recall task. Within age groups, sentence recognition performance over exposure was analyzed as a function of statistical learning performance, and other variables that may predict learning (i.e., hearing, vocabulary, attention switching control, working memory and processing speed). Younger and older adults showed similar amounts of perceptual learning, but only younger adults showed significant statistical learning. In older adults, improvement in understanding noise-vocoded speech was constrained by age. In younger adults, amount of adaptation was associated with lexical knowledge and with statistical learning ability. Thus, individual differences in general cognitive abilities explain listeners' variability in adapting to noise-vocoded speech. Results suggest that perceptual and statistical learning share mechanisms of implicit regularity detection, but that the ability to detect statistical regularities is impaired in older adults if visual sequences are presented quickly. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T11:00:41Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c5e0bfb9f9a3481e938a6f61c566e935 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-5161 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-22T11:00:41Z |
| publishDate | 2014-09-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-c5e0bfb9f9a3481e938a6f61c566e9352022-12-21T18:28:30ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience1662-51612014-09-01810.3389/fnhum.2014.0062888875Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adultsThordis Marisa Neger0Thordis Marisa Neger1Toni eRietveld2Esther eJanse3Esther eJanse4Radboud University NijmegenInternational Max Planck Research School for Language SciencesRadboud University NijmegenRadboud University NijmegenRadboud University NijmegenWithin a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech relates to statistical learning, as sensitivity to probabilistic information may aid identification of relevant cues in novel speech input. If statistical learning and perceptual learning (partly) draw on the same general mechanisms, then statistical learning in a non-auditory modality using non-linguistic sequences should predict adaptation to degraded speech.In the present study, 73 older adults (aged over 60 years) and 60 younger adults (aged between 18 and 30 years) performed a visual artificial grammar learning task and were presented with sixty meaningful noise-vocoded sentences in an auditory recall task. Within age groups, sentence recognition performance over exposure was analyzed as a function of statistical learning performance, and other variables that may predict learning (i.e., hearing, vocabulary, attention switching control, working memory and processing speed). Younger and older adults showed similar amounts of perceptual learning, but only younger adults showed significant statistical learning. In older adults, improvement in understanding noise-vocoded speech was constrained by age. In younger adults, amount of adaptation was associated with lexical knowledge and with statistical learning ability. Thus, individual differences in general cognitive abilities explain listeners' variability in adapting to noise-vocoded speech. Results suggest that perceptual and statistical learning share mechanisms of implicit regularity detection, but that the ability to detect statistical regularities is impaired in older adults if visual sequences are presented quickly.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00628/fullAgingindividual differencesworking memoryPerceptual Learningstatistical learningprocessing speed |
| spellingShingle | Thordis Marisa Neger Thordis Marisa Neger Toni eRietveld Esther eJanse Esther eJanse Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Aging individual differences working memory Perceptual Learning statistical learning processing speed |
| title | Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| title_full | Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| title_fullStr | Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| title_full_unstemmed | Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| title_short | Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| title_sort | relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults |
| topic | Aging individual differences working memory Perceptual Learning statistical learning processing speed |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00628/full |
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