Impact of Short-Term Hearing Aid Use on Cognitive Performance, Noise Acceptance, and Self-Perceived Benefit.

Purpose: Given emerging evidence suggesting a correlation between hearing and cognitive performance, hearing loss may be a modifiable risk factor for future cognitive decline or dementia in older adults. However, more evidence is needed to determine how hearing loss and hearing aid (HA) treatment affect cognition and self-perceived listening abilities in this population.

Method: The current study used a repeated-measures design to explore changes in cognitive performance, self-reported hearing difficulties, and noise acceptance in older adults at baseline and at 2 and 4 months after receiving their first pair of bilateral HAs.

Results: The results of this study suggest a significant average improvement for all three test measures after 2 and 4 months of HA use. Results on the individual cognition measures indicated that the significant average improvement on working memory tasks in a low-cognition group drove the overall significant improvement in fluid cognition. The principal components analysis found associations between test measures and patient variables, including better ear pure-tone average (PTA) and hours of HA use. Most notable were associations among baseline listening difficulty ratings, noise acceptance, and PTA as well as associations between cognitive performance and average hours of HA use.

Conclusions: Significant average improvements in cognitive performance, self-reported hearing difficulties, and noise acceptance were found after 2 and 4 months of HA use in older adults. Participants with lower baseline fluid cognition showed greater gains on working memory measures. Average performance on test measures was associated with hearing thresholds and hours of HA use.