Mild hearing impairment can reduce verbal memory performance in a healthy adult population

We studied to what extent immediate and delayed recall in an auditory verba l learning paradigm was affected by basic information processing speed (dig it copying) and hearing acuity (average hearing acuity at 1, 2 and 4 KHz at the better ear). A group of 453 individuals in the age between 23 and 82 y ears with no overt hearing pathology was recruited from a larger study of c ognitive aging (Maastricht Aging Study, MAAS). After controlling for age, s ex, educational level, and processing speed it was found that a mild to mod erate hearing loss predicted lower verbal memory performance. Auditory admi nistered verbal memory tests can underestimate true memory performance, par ticularly in older individuals with unknown hearing status.