Chapter 9 – Audition and Language Comprehension in Adult Aging: Stability in the Face of Change

Older adults are the fastest-growing segment of the US population, with the number of adults age 65 or older expected to grow to 70.3 million in 2030. Among this group, hearing loss is the third most prevalent chronic medical condition, exceeded only by arthritis and hypertension. Although hearing loss is a common accompaniment of adult aging, it has historically been considered as an independent issue in aging research. We now know, however, that there are effects of hearing loss beyond simply missing or misidentifying individual words in a spoken message. That is, even with milder hearing losses the perceptual effort required for successful speech recognition may draw on cognitive resources that would otherwise be available for downstream comprehension operations or encoding what has been heard in memory. When combined with age-related declines in working memory, processing speed, and executive function, comprehension of everyday speech can represent a significant challenge at both the perceptual and cognitive levels.