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Background noise affects older listeners
What is it about?
Understanding speech in background noise is especially difficult as one grows older. In this study, we observed that older listeners, even with slight hearing loss in the high frequency, encounter more difficulty in understanding speech in the presence of background noises. However, the type and amount of linguistic information in the background noise decides how much the background noises affect the older individuals' ability to understand speech.
Why is it important?
Our findings show two things - (a) even a slight hearing loss, in select frequencies, can reduce an older individiual's ability to understand speech in noise, (b) Older listeners have a wealth of life experience in handling difficult listening situations which often help them compensate for their listening difficulties.