Cognitive Shifting Ability Does Not Predict Self-Perceived Hearing Difficulties in Adult Hearing-Aid Users.

It looks at data collected at one point for another study, so it can show that things go together but not that one causes the other. Everyone had mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss in both ears and had used hearing aids for more than a year, so the results say nothing about other types or degrees of loss, or about people who do not use hearing aids. The researchers did not keep track of how much people actually wore their hearing aids, which may have varied a lot between them. Participants reported their own sex, and the authors say they cannot be sure how the question was understood. Depression and anxiety were not measured, though both are known to affect reported hearing difficulty and performance on thinking tests. Shifting ability was tested with a single task, so the result may be specific to that task, and the task required eye movements that could be affected by undetected balance problems. Missing answers were filled in by imputation, up to 23 people on the sound quality questions. Hearing thresholds and education together explained only a small part of the reported difficulty, so most of what drives it is not captured here.

Four grants funded the work: the Linnaeus Centre HEAD excellence centre grant from the Swedish Research Council; a FORTE programme grant awarded to Ronnberg; a Swedish Research Council grant awarded to Fridberger; and a grant from the William Demant Foundation awarded to Danielsson. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude from this that thinking abilities do not matter for listening. Only one shifting task was used, the authors themselves call that conclusion speculative, and other abilities such as working memory were not tested.