Age-related temporal and level sensitivity decline precedes measurable hearing loss

Evidence

Despite clinically “normal” audibility, the pure-tone average (PTA) for the tested frequency range declined as a function of age (r = 0.65, p ≤ 0.001, one-tailed). Since changes in sensitivity even in the normal audiometric range can affect SiN identification (Dubno and Ahlstrom 1997 ), PTA is treated as a possible confounding variable in analyses involving the entire age group. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1138

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of silently progressive sensory decline discussed in aging/cognition literature; also pairs with the later finding that older participants’ performance gaps are not explained by audibility alone. — connects to: Human audible frequency range narrows dramatically with age — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 1887
• QUESTION: If PTA declines with age even among audiometrically normal hearers, at what point does subclinical sensitivity loss cross from confounding variable to the actual driver of speech-in-noise difficulty?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1138