Department of Psychology, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
Centre for Research in Human Development, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2019 Jan 10;74(2):275-283. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbx047.
Among older adults (OA), hearing loss is associated with an increased risk for falls. The aim of the present study was to experimentally investigate the cognitive compensation hypothesis, wherein decreased auditory and motor functioning are compensated by the recruitment of cognitive resources.
Twenty-nine younger adults (YA), 26 OA, and 32 OA with age-related hearing loss (ARHL) completed a dual-task paradigm consisting of cognitive and balance recovery tasks performed singly and concurrently. The auditory stimuli were presented with or without background noise.
Both older adult groups performed significantly worse than YA on the cognitive task in noisy conditions and ARHL also demonstrated disproportionate negative effects of dual-tasking and noise. The kinematic data indicated that OA and ARHL demonstrated greater plantarflexion when compared with YA. Conversely, YA showed greater hip extension in response to dual-tasking.
The cognitive and balance results suggest that YA were able to flexibly allocate their attention between tasks, whereas ARHL exhibited prioritization of posture over cognitive performance.
在老年人中，听力损失与跌倒风险增加有关。本研究的目的是实验性地检验认知补偿假说，即听觉和运动功能的下降可以通过认知资源的调动得到补偿。
29 名年轻成年人（YA）、26 名老年成年人（OA）和 32 名老年成年人伴听力损失（ARHL）完成了一个由认知和平衡恢复任务组成的双重任务范式，这些任务分别和同时进行。听觉刺激在有背景噪声和无背景噪声的情况下呈现。
在嘈杂环境下，两个老年成年人组在认知任务上的表现明显差于 YA，并且 ARHL 还表现出双重任务和噪声的不成比例的负面影响。运动学数据表明，OA 和 ARHL 与 YA 相比表现出更大的跖屈。相反，YA 在双重任务下表现出更大的髋关节伸展。
认知和平衡的结果表明，YA 能够灵活地在任务之间分配注意力，而 ARHL 则表现出对姿势的优先于认知表现的倾向。
