Cognitive decline is evident in the elderly and it affects speech perception and foreign language learning. A listen-and-repeat training with a challenging speech sound contrast was earlier found to be effective in young monolingual adults and even in advanced L2 university students at the attentive and pre-attentive levels. This study investigates foreign language speech perception in the elderly with the same protocol used with the young adults. Training effects were measured with attentive behavioural measures (N = 9) and with electroencephalography measuring the pre-attentive mismatch negativity (MMN) response (N = 10). Training was effective in identification, but not in discrimination and there were no changes in the MMN. The most attention demanding perceptual functions which benefit from experience-based linguistic knowledge were facilitated through training, whereas pre-attentive processing was unaffected. The elderly would probably benefit from different training types compared to younger adults.

老年人的认知能力下降很明显，它影响言语感知和外语学习。较早地发现，具有挑战性的语音对比的听与重复训练对单语年轻人甚至在专心和专心的高级L2大学学生中都是有效的。本研究以与年轻人相同的协议调查老年人的外语言语感知能力。训练效果通过注意行为量度（N = 9）和脑电图测量注意前失配阴性（MMN）反应（N = 10）来测量。培训对识别有效，但对歧视没有效果，MMN没有任何变化。得益于基于经验的语言知识，最受关注的要求感知功能是通过培训来实现的，而注意前的处理则不受影响。与年轻人相比，老年人可能会从不同的培训类型中受益。