Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
Ear Hear. 2019 Sep/Oct;40(5):1210-1219. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000000700.
Previous studies strongly suggest that declines in auditory threshold can lead to impaired cognition. The aim of this study was to expand that picture by investigating how the relationships between age, auditory function, and cognitive function vary with the types of auditory and cognitive function considered.
Three auditory constructs (threshold, temporal-order identification, and gap detection) were modeled to have an effect on four cognitive constructs (episodic long-term memory, semantic long-term memory, working memory, and cognitive processing speed) together with age that could have an effect on both cognitive and auditory constructs. The model was evaluated with structural equation modeling of the data from 213 adults ranging in age from 18 to 86 years.
The model provided good a fit to the data. Regarding the auditory measures, temporal-order identification had the strongest effect on the cognitive functions, followed by weaker indirect effects for gap detection and nonsignificant effects for threshold. Regarding the cognitive measures, the association with audition was strongest for semantic long-term memory and working memory but weaker for episodic long-term memory and cognitive speed. Age had a very strong effect on threshold and cognitive speed, a moderate effect on temporal-order identification, episodic long-term memory, and working memory, a weak effect on gap detection, and nonsignificant, close to zero effect on semantic long-term memory.
The result shows that auditory temporal-order function has the strongest effect on cognition, which has implications both for which auditory concepts to include in cognitive hearing science experiments and for practitioners. The fact that the total effect of age was different for different aspects of cognition and partly mediated via auditory concepts is also discussed.
先前的研究强烈表明，听力阈值的下降会导致认知能力受损。本研究旨在通过研究所考虑的听觉和认知功能的类型如何影响年龄、听觉功能和认知功能之间的关系，来扩展这一图景。
三个听觉结构（阈值、时序识别和间隙检测）被建模为对四个认知结构（情景长时记忆、语义长时记忆、工作记忆和认知加工速度）以及年龄的影响，年龄也可能对认知和听觉结构产生影响。该模型通过对 213 名年龄在 18 至 86 岁之间的成年人的数据进行结构方程建模进行了评估。
该模型很好地拟合了数据。就听觉测量而言，时序识别对认知功能的影响最大，其次是间隙检测的间接影响较弱，而阈值的影响不显著。就认知测量而言，与听觉的关联在语义长时记忆和工作记忆方面最强，但在情景长时记忆和认知速度方面较弱。年龄对阈值和认知速度有很强的影响，对时序识别、情景长时记忆和工作记忆有中度影响，对间隙检测有较弱的影响，对语义长时记忆有接近零的不显著影响。
结果表明，听觉时序功能对认知的影响最强，这对认知听力科学实验中包含哪些听觉概念以及对从业者都有影响。年龄对认知不同方面的总影响不同，部分通过听觉概念中介，这一事实也进行了讨论。
