Auditive and cognitive factors in speech perception by elderly listeners. III. Additional data and final discussion

In a previous study [van Rooij and Plomp, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, 2611–2624 (1990)], it was found that speech‐perception performance in a sample of elderly subjects tested in the laboratory may be largely determined by two statistically independent components: (1) a major component representing the progressive middle‐ to high‐frequency hearing loss with age and (2) a minor component mainly representing a general decrement in cognitive performance. In the present study, a selected subset of tests used in the laboratory study was administered to a group of elderly subjects less likely to participate in laboratory experimentation. The results show that approximately all the systematic variance with respect to speech‐perception performance, as tested by speech‐reception thresholds (SRTs), can be accounted for by the audiogram alone. The implications of the results of the present study and those of earlier ones [van Rooij, Plomp, and Orlebeke, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 86, 1294–1309 (1989) and van Rooij and Plomp, J...