Aging, hearing acuity, and the attentional costs of effortful listening

Abstract

A dual-task interference paradigm was used to investigate the effect of perceptual effort on recall of spoken word lists by young and older adults with good hearing and with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. In addition to poorer recall accuracy, listeners with hearing loss, especially older adults, showed larger secondary task costs while recalling the word lists even though the stimuli were presented at a sound intensity that allowed correct word identification. Findings support the hypothesis that extra effort at the sensory-perceptual level attendant to hearing loss has negative consequences to downstream recall, an effect that may be further magnified with increased age.

Figure 1

Dual-task costs in secondary task tracking performance during word-list recall for four groups of participants (younger and older adults with good hearing and poor hearing), with cost calculated as [(Single-task percent time-on-target) - (dual-task percent time-on-target)]. (Error bars represent one standard error.)