Older adults' recognition of medical terminology in hospital noise

Word identification accuracy is modulated by many factors including linguistic characteristics of words (frequent vs. infrequent), listening environment (noisy vs. quiet), and listener-related differences (older vs. younger). Nearly, all studies investigating these factors use high-familiarity words and noise signals that are either energetic maskers (e.g., white noise) or informational maskers composed of competing talkers (e.g., multitalker babble). Here, we expand on these findings by examining younger and older listeners' speech-in-noise perception for words varying in both frequency and familiarity within a simulated hospital noise that has important non-speech information. The method was inspired by the real-world challenges aging patients can face in understanding less familiar medical terminology used by healthcare professionals in noisy hospital environments. Word familiarity data from older and young adults were collected for 800 medically related terms. Familiarity ratings were highly correlated between the two age groups. Older adults' transcription accuracy for sentences with medical terminology that vary in their familiarity and frequency was assessed across four listening conditions: hospital noise, speech-shaped noise, amplitude-modulated speech-shaped noise, and quiet. Listeners were less accurate in noise conditions than in a quiet condition and were more impacted by hospital noise than either speech-shaped noise. Sentences with low-familiarity and low-frequency medical words combined with hospital noise were particularly detrimental for older adults compared to younger adults. The results impact our theoretical understanding of speech perception in noise and highlight real-world consequences of older adults' difficulties with speech-in-noise and specifically noise containing competing, non-speech information.