Relationship Between Central Auditory Processing Abilities and Working Memory During Adolescence

Adolescence is a period of transformation in humans with changes in the neural physiology at subcortical and cortical levels. However, its significance on auditory processing skills and working memory skills and their association is yet to be well understood. Hence, the current study was designed to evaluate and establish the association between auditory processing skills and working memory abilities in adolescents.

A total of 125 adolescents within the age range of 10 to 15 years participated in the current study. All of them had normal hearing sensitivity and no associated obvious peripheral or central deficits. All the participants underwent auditory closure ability assessment using quick speech perception in noise test in Kannada, binaural integration ability assessment using dichotic CV test, and temporal processing assessment using gap detection test. Auditory working memory abilities were assessed using auditory digit span and digit sequencing.

Spearman correlation was done to assess the correlation between auditory processing skills and working memory abilities. Results revealed a significant negative correlation between most of the central auditory processing abilities and all the working memory spans.

Findings of the current study indicate that individuals with poor working memory abilities have difficulty in auditory processing abilities.