Hearing Loss in Older Adulthood WhatItIsandHowItInteractsWithCognitive Performance

Adultagingisaccompaniedbydeclinesinmany areas of cognitive functioning, including reduced memory fornewinformation.Potentialsourcesofthesedeclinesare wellestablishedandincludeslowedprocessing,diminished working-memory capacity, and a reduced ability to inhibit interference. In addition, older adults often experience sensory decline, including decreased hearing acuity for high-frequency sounds and deficits in frequency and tem- poral resolution. These changes add to the challenge faced byolderadultsincomprehensionandmemoryforeveryday rapid speech. Use of contextual information and added perceptual and cognitive effort can partially offset the deleteriouseffectsofthesesensorydeclines.Thismay,how- ever, come at a cost to resources that might otherwise be available for ''downstream'' operations such as encoding the speech content in memory. We argue that future re- search should focus not only on sensory and cognitive functioning as separate domains but also on the dynamics of their interaction. KEYWORDS—aging; verbal memory; hearing; speech per- ception; effort