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Central Auditory and Executive Determinants of Speech Processing and Learning in Older Adults with Mild Hearing Impairment and Cognitive Decline
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Stefan Elmer1, Ulrike Lemke2, Nathalie Giroud1; 11Neurosciences of Communication, Language, and Cognition, University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 2Sonova AG, Zurich, Switzerland
Age-related hearing loss (HL) is often accompanied by subjective or objective indicators of cognitive decline and frequently leads to speech processing difficulties. However, this comorbidity is frequently overlooked, complicating the interpretation of findings and obscuring the relative contributions of peripheral, central auditory, and cognitive factors to speech processing and learning in older adults with HL. Building on the frequent co-occurrence of HL and cognitive decline, we examined how inter-individual differences in peripheral, central auditory and cognitive capacities influence the encoding, processing, and learning of new words, used as a proxy for estimating speech-processing abilities. Older adults with mild HL and signs of cognitive decline (N = 21) completed an attentive listening and associative word-learning task using Thai words while undergoing EEG recordings, followed by comprehensive psychometric, audiometric, and auditory assessments. Benchmarking against established findings confirmed the integrity of neural markers of word learning in this specific population, as reflected in the N400 and LPC event-related potential (ERP) components, with the LPC component predicting word-learning performance. Additional multiple linear regression models, controlling for age and HL, were used to examine whether individual differences in sensory ERPs (P50, N100, P200), behavioral auditory-audiometric measures (OLSA, PTA 4000, d-prime attentive listening), or cognitive variables (attention, language, memory, perception, executive function, n-back, Stroop) predicted word-learning performance. Age accounted for the largest proportion of variance across models, with ERPs and cognitive function scores also emerging as significant predictors of word-learning performance. In contrast, mild HL had a minimal and nonsignificant effect. Specifically, N100 amplitudes explained variance in the sensory ERP models, whereas executive functions drove performance in the cognitive models. Overall, these findings indicate preserved speech processing and learning abilities in older adults with HL and cognitive decline, with superior performance associated with younger age, larger N100 amplitudes reflecting enhanced central auditory processing, and stronger executive functioning.
Topic Areas: Speech Perception, Language Development/Acquisition