Linguistic information may compensate for age-related decline in attentional filtering.

Increased reliance on higher-level linguistic information may compensate for age-related declines in attentional filtering during speech comprehension, especially in older adults.

• Why it matters: Understanding speech in social and multitalker situations becomes more difficult with age, and the neural mechanisms behind this decline are not fully understood, which hampers development of supportive strategies.
• What they did: Researchers recorded EEG signals from 63 participants aged 19 to 71 performing a multitalker speech comprehension task with individualized target-to-distractor ratios, combining multivariate temporal response function modeling with behavioral responses.
• The result: Findings indicate that older adults show increased distractor representation linked to reduced performance, but they also rely more on higher-level linguistic information, which may help maintain comprehension despite age-related distractibility.