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Poor Hearing Can Impair Memory
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 new study suggests.
The study found that even when older, hearing-impaired adults
heard words well enough to repeat them, they weren't able to memorize
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 Arthur Wingfield, a professor of neuroscience
at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., said in a prepared statement.
The findings appear in latest issue of Current Directions
in Psychological Science.
"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.
Individuals interacting with hearing-impaired adults, especially
caregivers and health care workers, may want to keep this type
of deficit in mind, the researchers said.
For example, they could modify how they communicate by speaking
clearly and pausing after clauses in speech, or after separate
chunks of meaning, Wingfield said. This doesn't mean they have
to dramatically slow down their speech, however -- just speak
more clearly, he said.
