Older adults with mild to moderate-hearing loss may use up so much cognitive effort trying to hear and understand speech that it undermines their ability to remember what they've just heard, a study suggests.
The study found that even when older, hearing-impaired adults heard words well enough to repeat them, they weren't able to memorise and remember those words as well as older adults with good hearing.
"This study is a wake-up call to anyone who works with older people, including health care professionals, to be especially sensitive to how hearing loss can affect cognitive function," study lead researcher a professor of neuroscience at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, Arthur Wingfield said. "There are subtle effects of hearing loss on memory and cognitive function in older adults. The effect of expending extra effort comprehending words means there are fewer cognitive resources for higher level comprehension," Wingfield noted.
The findings appeared in a recent issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.