Aging-Related Decline in Phonated and Whispered Speech Perception Not Compensated For by Increased Duration and Intensity: Evidence From Mandarin-Speaking Adult Listeners.

The results suggest that aging adversely affected speech perception in both phonated and whispered conditions with more challenges in identifying whispered speech for older adults. While older adults' diminished performance may be potentially due to problems with processing the degraded temporal and spectral information of the target speech sounds, it cannot be simply compensated for by increasing the duration and intensity of the target sounds beyond the audible level.