Associations Between Hearing and Cognitive Abilities From Childhood to Middle Age: The National Child Development Study 1958.

Most participants had normal hearing, and people with deafness or a history linked to hearing loss were excluded, so the results may not apply to patients with significant hearing loss. Participants excluded for missing data generally had poorer hearing and lower cognitive test performance, so the analytical sample may underrepresent people with worse function. Childhood hearing tests were done in different local facilities and were not standardized across sites, so childhood hearing measures may be less accurate than adult measures. Hearing and cognitive tests were not the same at each age and were not assessed at the same time, so the cross-lagged associations should be interpreted cautiously. The large sample can produce significant results for small associations, so the size of the effects matters more than statistical significance alone. The middle-aged sample had some underrepresentation of disadvantaged and minority groups. The study is observational, so it cannot show that hearing loss causes poorer cognition or that cognition causes hearing loss.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, and Age UK.

Do not conclude that treating hearing loss improves cognition, or that cognitive ability causes hearing loss. This was an observational study of mostly normal hearing, and the childhood-to-middle-age links were no longer significant after adult health and work factors were considered.