The present article contains a brief review of the literature concerning auditory aging, describing specifical studies on aging of temporal auditory processing. Experimental procedures for research on temporal auditory processing are described. Studies about the effects of aging on the detection of gaps in noises and pure tones, as well as studies on the relationship between temporal auditory processing and speech recognition, among young and aged subjects, are discussed. Some of the main controversies about the relationship between temporal auditory processing and speech recognition are described. The differences found among the results of the studies in this area are interpreted in terms of the complexity of the procedures of assessment of temporal auditory processing adopted. Finally, suggestions about future directions of research are presented.
auditory aging; auditory temporal processing; gap detection; speech recognition