Hearing loss is the third most prevalent chronic medical condition among older adults in the United States. Most attention in audiology and hearing science has been given to the consequences for effective communication of missing, or mishearing, words in a spoken utterance. More subtle, however, is mounting evidence that, even with a relatively mild hearing loss, successful recognition can draw on cognitive resources that would otherwise be available for other cognitive operations. This presentation will discuss current data and research methods that explore the cognitive costs of successful but effortful perception with a degraded speech input. This resource-related cost appears in a reduced ability to encode what has been heard in memory and to comprehend speech when meaning is expressed with underspecified or complex syntax. These represent “hidden effects” of mild-to-moderate hearing loss that appear even when the speech itself passes a test of audibility, and broadens the full picture of age-related hearing loss in everyday listening.
