Comparing the Recognition of Stop Consonants in Persian Between AdultsAged 30-39 and 40-49 Years

Due to the improvement of living conditions in recent decades, there is animportant issue called quality of life (QoL). One of the important factors that affect the QoL is the abilityto communicate with others. Everyday communication is usually interfered by noise. Consonants playan important role in understanding the meaning of words. Since stop consonants are dependent on thefollowing vowels, they are more vulnerable to the masking effects of noise. The present study aims toevaluate the effect of age, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and concurrent vowels on the recognition of stopconsonants in Persian.

The present cross-sectional study was conducted on 60 adults with normal hearingin two age groups of 30-39 and 40-49 years. After the auditory and speech assessments, the recognitionof stop consonants in the form of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables and in the presence ofbabble noise at three SNRs was compared between two age groups.

The difference in the recognition score of stop consonants was significant between two agegroups at the SNRs of 0, -5, and -10. There was also a significant difference between the two age groupsregarding the recognition of stop consonants in the presence of some vowels at three SNRs.

With increasing age, the recognition ability of stop consonants in the presence of babblenoises decreases. Increasing noise also reduces the recognition of stop consonants, especially those withsome vowels.