Individual differences and age-related normal and pathological changes in mental abilities require the use of cognitive screening and assessment tools. However, simultaneously occurring deficits in sensory processing, whose prevalence increases especially in old age, may negatively impact cognitive-test performance and thus result in an overestimation of cognitive decline. This hypothesis was tested using an impairment-simulation approach. Young normal-hearing university students performed three memory tasks, using auditorily presented speech stimuli that were either unprocessed or processed to mimic some of the perceptual consequences of age-related hearing loss (ARHL). Both short-term-memory and working-memory capacities were significantly lower in the simulated-hearing-loss condition, despite good intelligibility of the test stimuli. The findings are consistent with the notion that, in case of ARHL, the perceptual processing of auditory stimuli used in cognitive assessments requires additional (cognitive) resources that cannot be used toward the execution of the cognitive task itself. Researchers and clinicians would be well advised to consider sensory impairments as a confounding variable when administering cognitive tasks and interpreting their results.

中文翻译：

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关于认知衰退可能被高估：与年龄相关的听力损失对认知测试表现的影响

心理能力的个体差异和与年龄相关的正常和病理变化需要使用认知筛查和评估工具。然而，同时发生的感觉处理缺陷，其患病率尤其在老年时增加，可能会对认知测试表现产生负面影响，从而导致对认知能力下降的高估。使用减损模拟方法测试了该假设。听力正常的年轻大学生执行了三项记忆任务，使用听觉呈现的语音刺激，这些语音刺激要么未经处理，要么经过处理，以模仿与年龄相关的听力损失 (ARHL) 的一些感知后果。尽管测试刺激具有良好的可理解性，但在模拟听力损失条件下，短期记忆和工作记忆容量均显着降低。研究结果与以下观点一致，即在 ARHL 的情况下，认知评估中使用的听觉刺激的感知处理需要额外的（认知）资源，而这些资源不能用于执行认知任务本身。建议研究人员和临床医生在执行认知任务和解释其结果时将感觉障碍视为一个混杂变量。