THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING AND HEARING ABILITY IN OLDER ADULTS

摘要

Built on the recent epidemiologic evidence of the association between hearing loss and cognitive impairment, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between cognitive functioning and hearing ability in a group of healthy community-dwelling older adults with a wide range of ages and hearing status. Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a cognitive screening test for detecting mild cognitive impairment (Nasreddine et al., 2005), was used to assess cognitive functioning. Hearing ability was measured by clinical audiometric and speech-in-noise testing. The study included eighty older participants with an age range of 56–89 years and hearing status ranging from near-normal hearing to moderate hearing loss. The results showed that older individual’s MoCA score was strongly associated with hearing ability. Hearing (i.e., pure tone threshold) significantly predicted individual performance on MoCA, particularly for those test items that rely heavily on auditory input. Taken together, these findings highlight the intimate relationship between cognitive functioning and hearing ability, which should be recognized by the medical professionals in order to better serve the aging community (Work supported by NIH).