Comparison between central tonal tests and central speech tests in elderly subjects.

A battery of tonal tests investigating the performance of the central auditory pathways (auditory lateralization, temporal order, auditory pattern) has been applied, together with a battery of central speech tests (sensitized speech and synthetic sentences), to a group of 50 subjects aged from 60 to 80 years, affected only with presbycusis. The results demonstrate that the speech tests undergo a considerable reduction of the performance-intensity function with age whereas the tonal tests remain within the values obtained in younger subjects. The topodiagnostic implications of these data are discussed.