Title: "Age effects on perceptual restoration of interrupted sentences: 

Abstract: Adult cochlear-implant (CI) users show small or non-existent perceptual restoration effects when listening to interrupted speech. Perceptual restoration is believed to be a top-down mechanism that enhances speech perception in adverse listening conditions, and appears to be particularly utilized by older normal-hearing (NH) listeners. How aging and degraded speech (as would be presented through a CI speech processor) interact in the context of perceptual restoration, and whether older listeners can derive any restoration benefits from degraded speech, is the focus of this study. The present study tested two groups of NH listeners (younger: <35 years; older: ≥60 years) for perceptual restoration effects using interrupted sentences. Perceptual restoration was measured as the improvement in speech understanding with noise burst interruptions compared to silent-gap interruptions. Speech signal degradations were controlled by manipulating parameters of a noise vocoder and were used to analyze effects of spectral resolution and noise burst spectral content on perceptual restoration. Creating starker perceptual differences between speech and interrupting noise through increased spectral resolution and spectral content of noise bursts may be necessary for the effect to occur. Individual variability in perceptual restoration and possible mechanisms for the effect were explored using results from cognitive and language measures.