Different Associations between Auditory Function and Cognition Depending on Type of Auditory Function and Type of Cognition.
Henrik Danielsson, Larry E Humes, Jerker Rönnberg
PMID 30807540WHAT IT FOUND
Hearing thresholds alone did not predict cognitive decline once age was accounted for, but temporal-order identification and gap detection did.
Clinicians should assess non-threshold auditory processing, not just pure-tone audiograms, when evaluating cognitive risk in older adults.
Key findings
01Hearing thresholds had no significant direct or total effect on any cognitive function in the final model, contradicting predictions based on prior literature.
02Temporal-order identification had very large effects on working memory and semantic long-term memory, and medium effects on episodic long-term memory and cognitive speed.
03Gap detection had medium effects on temporal-order identification, working memory, and semantic long-term memory, acting as a lower-order ability influencing other auditory functions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that auditory deficits cause cognitive decline, only that they are associated. Participants had relatively good hearing (mean high-frequency loss in older adults was 26.6 dB HL), which may explain why hearing thresholds did not predict cognition, unlike in studies with more hearing-impaired populations. The tasks used to measure auditory and cognitive functions are not 'clean' and overlap in their demands (e.g., temporal-order tasks require working memory). Unmeasured variables like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression, which affect both hearing and cognition, were not controlled for.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (N.I.H., Extramural) and the National Institute on Aging (N.I.H., Extramural). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hearing thresholds are irrelevant to cognitive decline. The lack of association in this study is likely due to the relatively good hearing of the participants. In patients with significant hearing loss, thresholds may still be a strong predictor of cognitive risk.