Memory and Hearing Loss – Part 3
Professor Wingfield advises anyone who works with older adults to modify how they speak to older adults, not necessarily dramatically slowing down their speech.
Professor Wingfield’s research can be found published in the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science.
The effects of hearing loss on memory in older adults are significant when physicians are trying to diagnose other age related memory disorders.
The shift of cognitive function from memory to hearing is similar to the way people with vision loss shift cognitive function to their other senses.
The memory function in older adults who can hear at normal levels is measurably better than the memory function of adults with hearing loss.
One side effect of hearing loss is withdrawal, which can also have an affect on memory and cognitive skills in older adults.
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Hearing loss and memory loss are common in Boomers and both can look the same to an outside observer. For example, research has shown that people with mild to moderate hearing loss might spend so much energy trying to understand what is being said that their ability to remember the conversation suffers as a result.
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