Relationships between self-report and cognitive measures of hearing aid outcome

This present study examined the relationship between cognitive measures and self-report hearing aid outcome. A sentence-final word identification and recall (SWIR) test was used to investigate how hearing aid use may relate to experienced explicit cognitive processing. A visually based cognitive test battery was also administered. To measure self-report hearing aid outcome, the International Outcome Inventory – Hearing Aids (IOI-HA) and the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) were employed. Twenty-six experienced hearing aid users (mean age of 59 years) with symmetrical moderate-to-moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss were recruited. Free recall performance in the SWIR test correlated negatively with item 3 of IOI-HA, which measures residual difficulty in adverse listening situations. Cognitive abilities related to verbal information processing were correlated positively with self-reported hearing aid use and overall success. The present study showed that reported residual difficulty with hearing aid may relate to experienced explicit processing in difficult listening conditions, such that individuals with better cognitive capacity tended to report more remaining difficulty in challenging listening situations. The possibility of using cognitive measures to predict hearing aid outcome in real life should be explored in future research.