Linguistic information compensates for age-related decline in attentional filtering

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

As we age, understanding speech in social situations imposes an increasingly difficult challenge to the auditory system. However, the attentional mechanisms underlying age-related speech comprehension difficulties in multitalker situations remain unclear. We collected EEG signals while 63 normal hearing participants from 19 to 71 years performed a speech comprehension task involving a multitalker paradigm at individually adjusted target-to-distractor ratios. Combining trial-resolved multivariate temporal response function modeling with detailed behavioral comprehension responses, we provide a window into lower-level impairments and higher-level compensatory mechanisms across the adult life span. Neuro-behavioral correlations on a trial-by-trial level provide direct evidence for increased distractor representation underlying reduced behavioral performance in late adulthood. This points towards increased distractibility as a potential mechanism underlying age-related speech comprehension deficits. Additionally, at the behavioral and neural levels, we show that older adults relied more on higher-level linguistic information. Finally, we show that an increased reliance on word-level linguistic information may compensate for increased distractor tracking and adaptively support comprehension performance across the adult life span. Specifically, we directly show that increased reliance on higher-level processing can offset age-related impairments in attentional filtering.