{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025477707006369428, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0025477707006369425, 'mean_word_length': 6.044843049327354, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Engaging stories eradicate age-related deficits in dip-listening

Fluctuating background masking sounds facilitate speech intelligibility by providing speech ‘glimpses’ (masking release). Older adults benefit less from glimpses, but masking release is typically investigated using isolated sentences. Recent work indicates that naturalistic speech (spoken stories) may qualitatively alter speech-in-noise listening. Moreover, neural sensitivity to different amplitude envelopes profiles (ramped vs. damped) changes with age, but whether this impacts speech listening is unknown. In three experiments, we investigate how masking release in younger and older adults differs for masked disconnected sentences and stories, and how intelligibility varies with masker temporal profile. Intelligibility was generally greater for damped compared to ramped maskers for both age groups and speech types. Masking release was reduced in older relative to younger adults for disconnected sentences (Experiment 1), and stories with a randomized sentence order (Experiment 3). When listening to stories with a coherent narrative, older adults demonstrated equal (Experiment 3) or greater (Experiment 2) masking release compared to younger adults. Reduced masking release previously observed in older adults does not appear to generalize to sounds with an engaging, connected narrative: this reinforces the idea that the listening materials qualitatively change listening behavior and that standard intelligibility paradigms may underestimate speech-listening abilities in older adults.