Older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss may use up so much cognitive effort trying to hear and understand speech that it undermines their ability to remember what they've heard, a study suggests.

It found that even when older, hearing-impaired adults heard words well enough to repeat them, they weren't able to memorize and remember those words as well as older adults with good hearing.

"This study is a wake-up call to anyone who works with older people, including health-care professionals, to be especially sensitive to how hearing loss can affect cognitive function," said study lead researcher Arthur Wingfield, a professor of neuroscience at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

The findings appear in latest issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Those interacting with hearing-impaired adults may want to keep this type of deficit in mind, speak clearly and pause after separate chunks of meaning, the researchers said.

On the Web:

jama.ama-assn.org, where the American Medical Association has more on adult hearing loss.

From Los Angeles Daily News