Impaired comprehension of affective prosody in elderly subjects is not predicted by age-related hearing loss or age-related cognitive decline

Impairments in the ability of elderly people to comprehend affective prosody have been reported, but little is known about the relationship between affective prosodic comprehension and age-related changes in hearing and cognition. The Aprosodia Battery, which included an assessment of attitudinal comprehension, was used to compare affective-prosodic comprehension in young and elderly subjects and to investigate the relationship of results to selected hearing and neuropsychological measures. As a group, the healthy elderly subjects were impaired relative to young subjects on all tasks assessing comprehension of affective prosody. Variability within the elderly group was not predicted by mild to moderate peripheral hearing loss and was only marginally predicted by traditional cognitive measures. These findings along with those of other researchers suggest that loss of affective-prosodic comprehension in elderly persons is related to a specific aging effect that impairs right hemisphere function.