Intelligibility of Emotional Speech in Chinese Older Adults: Effects of Age-Related Hearing Loss

The intelligibility of speech with emotional prosody may decline with aging and hearing loss. In Mandarin Chinese, both lexical tone and emotional prosody rely on pitch variations, raising the possibility that emotional prosody modulates speech intelligibility. This study examined the effects of aging and age-related hearing loss on word recognition for Mandarin words spoken with different emotional prosodies.

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Audiologists treating Mandarin-speaking older adults should be aware that age-related hearing loss reduces intelligibility of emotional speech more than flat speech, suggesting emotionally naturalistic test materials may better reflect real-world communication difficulties.

Findings highlight that standard speech intelligibility tests using emotionally flat speech may underestimate the real-world listening challenges faced by older adults with hearing loss, particularly in tonal languages.

1. 01Age-related hearing loss reduces the ability to understand emotionally expressive Mandarin speech in older adults.
2. 02Lexical tone and emotional prosody (tone of voice) interact, compounding listening difficulty.
3. 03Study fills a gap — most prior intelligibility research used emotionally neutral speech stimuli.
4. 04Findings are specific to tonal language speakers but suggest broader implications for emotional communication.
5. 05Published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR).

PMID

42584965

DOI

10.1044/2026_JSLHR-25-00861.

Journal

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Publication type

research_article

Evidence level

2b

Population

Mandarin Chinese-speaking older adults with age-related hearing loss

Intervention

Exposure to emotionally prosodic Mandarin speech stimuli across varying emotion types

Comparator

Younger adults or older adults with normal hearing (implied control)