Auditory sensory systems have evolved to enable us to detect, locate, identify, segregate, and comprehend the various sound sources in our environment. In turn, once the individual sound sources have been identified and segregated, the information available has to be integrated with our world knowledge to determine how we should respond to our immediate environment. This then leads us to select or focus our attention on the auditory sound sources that are important to our short- or long-term survival. In other words, navigating in the real world requires both bottom-up processing of information to arrive at an accurate representation of our environment, and top-down control over the upward flow of information to focus attention on aspects of the environment that are critical to our survival. These bottom-up and top-down processes may share the same set of common resources. Hence, age-related changes in sensory and perceptual processes are quite likely to affect cognitive processing (e.g., speech comprehension), not only because such changes may degrade the perceptual representations of stimuli, but also because the degradation of the sensory information is likely to increase the demand on resources that are also required for efficient cognitive processing of the incoming information.
This Research Topic aims to address the nature of age-related changes in hearing, and the implications that such changes may have for cognitive processing of this degraded information. First, and foremost, to identify how normal aging affects basic psychoacoustic processes (e.g., hearing levels, pitch perception, auditory temporal properties, detection of signals in noise). Second, to explore how such age-related changes in hearing affect higher-order functions such as speech comprehension and memory for heard material. Finally, to discuss how such changes might affect the lives of older adults.
The scope for this Research Topic includes:
Auditory perception
1. Temporal processing
2. Stream segregation
Bottom-up and top-down interactions
1. Detection
2. Temporal processing
3. Stream segregation
Implications for life satisfaction
1. Communication and social interactions
2. Extent of social networking
Methodological aspects
1. Test batteries for auditory aging
2. Population assessment and big data tools
Auditory sensory systems have evolved to enable us to detect, locate, identify, segregate, and comprehend the various sound sources in our environment. In turn, once the individual sound sources have been identified and segregated, the information available has to be integrated with our world knowledge to determine how we should respond to our immediate environment. This then leads us to select or focus our attention on the auditory sound sources that are important to our short- or long-term survival. In other words, navigating in the real world requires both bottom-up processing of information to arrive at an accurate representation of our environment, and top-down control over the upward flow of information to focus attention on aspects of the environment that are critical to our survival. These bottom-up and top-down processes may share the same set of common resources. Hence, age-related changes in sensory and perceptual processes are quite likely to affect cognitive processing (e.g., speech comprehension), not only because such changes may degrade the perceptual representations of stimuli, but also because the degradation of the sensory information is likely to increase the demand on resources that are also required for efficient cognitive processing of the incoming information.
This Research Topic aims to address the nature of age-related changes in hearing, and the implications that such changes may have for cognitive processing of this degraded information. First, and foremost, to identify how normal aging affects basic psychoacoustic processes (e.g., hearing levels, pitch perception, auditory temporal properties, detection of signals in noise). Second, to explore how such age-related changes in hearing affect higher-order functions such as speech comprehension and memory for heard material. Finally, to discuss how such changes might affect the lives of older adults.
The scope for this Research Topic includes:
Auditory perception
1. Temporal processing
2. Stream segregation
Bottom-up and top-down interactions
1. Detection
2. Temporal processing
3. Stream segregation
Implications for life satisfaction
1. Communication and social interactions
2. Extent of social networking
Methodological aspects
1. Test batteries for auditory aging
2. Population assessment and big data tools