Does age-related hearing loss deteriorate attentional resources?

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Audiology
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Age-related hearing loss (HL) is increasingly linked to cognitive decline and dementia risk in older adults.
• The impact of HL on non-linguistic cognitive functions, such as attention, remains under-investigated.
• Poor speech recognition due to HL can affect social and emotional well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the effects of mild to moderate HL on covert orienting of attention, selective attention, and executive control in older adults.
• To compare cognitive performance between older adults with and without hearing impairment.

Main Methods:

• Participants: Older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss (26-60 dB HL) and age-matched controls.
• Tasks: Spatial cueing task (social vs. nonsocial cues), flanker task, and neuropsychological assessment (Montreal Cognitive Assessment - MoCA).
• Measures: Response times, interference effects, validity effects, and MoCA scores.

Main Results:

• Response times and flanker interference were similar between groups, suggesting preserved response speed and inhibition.
• Hearing-impaired individuals showed reduced validity effects in the spatial cueing task, indicating impaired attention orienting.
• Diminished performance was observed in hearing-impaired individuals on the MoCA and tasks requiring divided attention and cognitive flexibility.

Conclusions:

• Mild to moderate hearing loss in older adults deteriorates attention orienting, divided attention, and cognitive flexibility.
• These attentional deficits suggest that hearing loss may exacerbate age-related cognitive decline, particularly in visual attention.
• Hearing loss affects cognitive domains beyond speech recognition, highlighting the need for audiological assessment in cognitive health evaluations.