Interrupted speech and text are used to measure processes of linguistic closure that are important for recognition under adverse backgrounds. The present study compared recognition of speech and text that had been periodically interrupted with matched amounts of silence or white space, respectively. Recognition thresholds were obtained for younger and older adults with normal or simulated/impaired hearing and correlated with recognition of speech-in-babble. Results demonstrate domain-general, age-related processes in linguistic closure affecting high context sentences and domain-specific, hearing-related processes in speech recognition affecting low context sentences. Text recognition captures domain-general linguistic processes in speech recognition susceptible to age-related effects.