Responses to speech audiometry and phonemic discrimination patterns in the elderly.

A new approach to the assessment of the hearing of speech has been used with a group of the elderly and certain phonemic discrimination difficulties accompanying the ageing process have been examined by both conventional and automated testing systems. The results from both these test systems are displayed in directed graph form and these digraphs (directed graph) show marked asymmetry in both young and old. This datum differs in its symmetry aspects from classical confusion studies; reasons for this are discussed. Some evidence is produced which suggests that accompanying the ageing process in some individuals is a reduction in the number or availability of phoneme categories which they can handle.