Working memory
How do different hearing tests relate to our brain and daily life?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Tests using complex sentences in modulated noise depend more on attention and mental processing, while tests that vary background noise levels align best with how people subjectively experience their own hearing challenges.
Key findings
Performance on the complex sentence-in-noise test was predicted by attentional cognitive scores and hearing sensitivity, whereas performance on the simpler digit-in-noise tests was predicted only by hearing sensitivity. Additionally, changing the volume of the background noise in digit tests, rather than changing the volume of the speech, yielded scores that matched much more closely with participants' subjective daily communication struggles. General quality of life measures did not correlate with any speech perception outcomes, though hearing-specific questionnaires did.
Methodology
Researchers analyzed baseline data from 44 adults aged 50 to 74 with mild hearing loss to understand how cognitive abilities and self-reported daily hearing struggles relate to physical hearing test performance. Participants completed a battery of seven cognitive tests measuring attention and memory, alongside four speech-in-noise tests of varying complexity, including phonemes in quiet, digits in steady noise, and sentences in fluctuating noise. Self-reported quality of life and hearing-related difficulties were also measured using several standard questionnaires.
Limitations
Because this study utilized baseline data from a small sample of 44 adults with mild hearing loss who did not wear hearing aids, the findings may not generalize to people with more severe hearing loss or those who use hearing aids. Additionally, the correlational nature of the design means we cannot conclude that better attention directly causes better sentence comprehension in noise. Finally, the study was not fully counterbalanced to systematically untangle whether the target speech complexity or the background noise type drove the cognitive differences.
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