Association of Tinnitus With Speech Recognition and Executive Functions in Older Adults

TL;DR

Older adults with tinnitus struggle more with understanding speech in noisy environments and show worse cognitive performance in specific areas.

Contribution

This study identifies tinnitus-related speech and cognitive deficits in older adults, extending prior findings from younger populations.

Findings

Tinnitus is associated with worse performance in speech-in-noise and gated speech tasks in older adults.

Tinnitus is linked to reduced interference control, emotional interference, cognitive flexibility, and verbal working memory.

Tinnitus-related cognitive deficits correlate with tinnitus distress and loudness in older individuals.

Abstract

Adults with chronic subjective tinnitus often struggle with speech recognition in challenging listening environments. While most research demonstrates deficits in speech recognition among individuals with tinnitus, studies focusing on older adults remain scarce. Besides speech recognition deficits, tinnitus has been linked to diminished cognitive performance, particularly in executive functions, yet its associations with specific cognitive domains in ageing populations are not fully understood. Our previous study of younger adults found that individuals with tinnitus exhibit deficits in speech recognition and interference control. Building on this, we hypothesized that these deficits are also present for older adults. We conducted a cross-sectional study of older adults (aged 60–79), 32 with tinnitus and 31 controls matched for age, gender, education, and approximately matched for hearing loss. Participants underwent audiometric, speech recognition, and cognitive tasks. The tinnitus participants performed more poorly in speech-in-noise and gated speech tasks, whereas no group differences were observed in the other suprathreshold auditory tasks. With regard to cognition, individuals with tinnitus showed reduced interference control, emotional interference, cognitive flexibility, and verbal working memory, correlating with tinnitus distress and loudness. It is concluded that tinnitus-related deficits persist and even worsen with age. Our results suggest that altered central mechanisms contribute to speech recognition difficulties in older adults with tinnitus.

Figures