Compensatory and Serial Processing Models for Relating Electrophysiology, Speech Understanding, and Cognition.

The sample was small and was drawn from non-diabetic control participants recruited for a larger diabetes study. The group was mostly male, with 31 male and 2 female participants, so the findings may not apply equally to female patients. Participants had Mini-Mental Status Exam scores of 25 or higher and a mean pure-tone average of 13.3 dB, so it may not apply to people with cognitive impairment or hearing loss. The cognitive groups were created by splitting Digit-Symbol Coding scores at the mode. The groups were 16 poorer and 17 better participants. The model comparison was close, with posterior probabilities of 0.46 and 0.49 for one pattern and 0.54 and 0.51 for the other, so the study could not choose between the models. For 10% of peaks, especially in the 0-dB SNR condition, latencies and amplitudes were excluded from the data.

The supplied text does not include a conflicts-of-interest declaration. The publication types list NIH and U.S. government, non-PHS, research support.

Do not read the near-equal model support as proof that cognition and neural coding act independently. The study only showed that neither the compensatory nor serial interaction model was favored in 33 people. The authors' additive model was a suggestion, not a tested clinical result.