Yasuo Kuchinomachi

Aging and Shifts of Visual Attention in Saccadic Eye Movements

The authors examined age-related differences in target discrimination before the saccade to investigate the influence of aging on the facilitation of target discrimination by shifts of attention. Older and younger adults made saccades toward a peripheral stimulus after its onset and discriminated the orientation of the stimulus. Mean saccadic latency was greater for older adults than for younger adults. Facilitation of target discrimination immediately before the saccades was found both in older and younger adults. These results suggest that aging affects the properties of saccades but does not affect the properties of attentional shifts immediately before a saccade.

Method and apparatus for measuring sound that takes hearing characteristics into consideration

Sounds input via a sound input device are corrected in accordance with age-based hearing characteristic data read from a memory or correction values for reference hearing characteristics for individual hearing characteristics-measured by an individual hearing characteristics measurement device, and the sounds corresponding to the hearing characteristics are measured and displayed by the display.

Loudness functions of older people for pure tones and broadband noises

Loudness functions for pure tones and low‐pass filtered noises were obtained by the magnitude estimation to develop a method for evaluating loudness of older people. The subjects were young adults in their twenties with normal hearing and old adults of 60 and over with age‐related hearing loss. The results of the measurements are as follows: (1) There is no significant difference in the slope of loudness functions for pure tones between both age groups, suggesting most of the older subjects do not have large loudness recruitment. (2) The loudness of filtered noises judged by the older subjects decreases as the cutoff frequency of the noises increases. Considering the audiograms of the subjects, the declined ability of hearing at higher frequencies seems to be the cause of the decrease of loudness. (3) The decrease of loudness may be corrected by taking into account the amount of hearing loss of older people because they have no significant loudness recruitment.

Audio signals in domestic appliances evaluated in terms of the hearing ability of older adults

The audio signals used in domestic appliances currently available on the market in Japan were recorded to identify suitable signals for the hearing ability of older adults. The results of the analysis indicated the following three problems: (1) Some appliances use high‐frequency tones around 4000 Hz. Since these sounds are hard for older adults with presbycusis to hear, it would be better to use signals with lower frequencies. However, the problem here is that if the frequency is lowered, then the signal might be masked by domestic sounds whose power would be greater relative to the low‐frequency signals. (2) The signals used by some appliances are too soft. The intensity of some signals should be adjusted to compensate for the hearing loss among older adults. (3) The sounds used in these appliances are often very similar in terms of both timbre and temporal ringing patterns. That may cause confusion because it is difficult to identify which appliance is signaling.