Relationships Between Auditory Processing and Cognitive Abilities in Adults: A Systematic Review.

The review tallies significant versus nonsignificant correlations rather than pooling effect sizes, so it cannot say how strong the relationships are or whether they are clinically meaningful. The included studies were cross-sectional or cohort designs, so the relationships are correlational and do not show that one causes the other. Hearing status was reported inconsistently across the included studies and was not considered in the analysis, so it is unclear how much of the observed relationship is driven by hearing loss itself. Many individual comparisons came from only one or two studies, and the authors noted that no conclusions were drawn for relationships represented only once. The average study quality was moderate (4.3 out of 8), and 75 of 126 studies did not meet the standard for controlled design, 119 did not use blinding, and 123 did not use random sampling. The review is limited to adults aged 18 and older and to studies published in English in peer-reviewed journals.

Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (extramural) and by U.S. government non-PHS sources, as listed in the publication types. No industry funding or author conflicts of interest are stated in the text provided.

Do not read a poor speech-in-noise or temporal processing score as evidence of cognitive impairment. The review found the link is measure-specific: binaural processing and mismatch negativity showed no consistent relationship to any cognitive construct, and many individual studies found no relationship at all. The included studies were correlational, not causal, so a low score on one auditory test does not tell you what is happening in the brain.