老年人群的韵律感知

老龄化导致听觉系统、认知功能有所衰退。老年人群的言语理解能力减弱, 韵律信息解析存在困难。老年人对重音、语调、语速等语言韵律感知能力退化, 对情感韵律的加工也出现问题, 特别是消极情绪韵律加工减退较快。老年疾病进一步加深韵律加工难度, 韵律感知呈现出与特定疾病的相关性。未来研究需考察不同语言背景老年人群的韵律感知表现与机制、复杂交流环境的影响、韵律感知障碍对老年疾病的预测、韵律感知的早期干预与复健等问题。

Prosody perception in older adults

Age-related degradations,such as hearing loss and cognitive impairments,can interfere with older adults’perception of prosodic information in speech sounds.Older individuals,especially those with age-related diseases,have a diminished ability to decode linguistic prosody.They have difficulty processing pitch contour,word stress,intonation,and speeded utterances.Also,older individuals have deficits in the perception of affective prosody,particularly for the speech conveying negative emotions.Evidence from neural mechanisms shows that age-related diseases,such as idiopathic Parkinson’s disease,have specific effects on the processing of prosody comprehension.However,it is still difficult to determine how well older adults who speak Mandarin perform in prosody perception.Thus,further explorations need to address a range of topics such as prosody processing in older adults with different language backgrounds,the effects of complex auditory environments,the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual performance in complex prosodic tasks,the specific prosody processing difficulties associated with age-related diseases,and the rehabilitation of prosody processing ability in older adults.