Listening-Related Fatigue Linked to Aging and Cognitive Factors

A new study offers evidence that cognitive and sensory changes linked to aging can increase listening-related fatigue and protect against such.

As indicated in a PsyPost report, people experiencing listening-related fatigue are feeling worn out from daily communications and feel the need to expend so much energy to listen and understand other people.

It's commonly known that aging is linked to reduced hearing sensitivity and changes in cognition functions. However, surprisingly little is known about how psychological variables interact with one another.

According to Ronan McGarrigle, study author and lecturer in psychology at the University of Bradford, speech understanding is a highly complicated process that continues evolving throughout the human lifespan.

He added that the human brain needs to filter the multitude of irrelevant sounds encountered in everyday life, like traffic noise and background conversations, to execute the skill successfully.

Listening-Related Fatigue Analyzed

While such backstage operations are going largely unnoticed for a lot of people, for others like individuals who have a hearing loss, this process may come expensive.

For about ten years now, McGarrigle explained, he has been interested in better understanding how to characterize and quantify such costs, which frequently include feelings of fatigue and tiredness from listening.

The study author adds that he found it both fascinating and a bit concerning that little is known about an experience that feels quite intuitive and familiar to most people, yet which can severely affect the quality of life in those most affected.

In the study published in Psychological Science, 281 adults aged 18 to 85 years old completed an auditory attention task that examined their ability to follow one speaker while at the same time ignoring another.

The research participants also completed subjective analyses of listening-related fatigue, mood states, memory ability, hearing impairment, and sensory-processing sensitivity.

Sensory-Processing Sensitivity

As for the older adults, they tended to report higher hearing impairment levels, which was linked to increased listening-related fatigue. However, after controlling for perceiving hearing impairment, perceived memory ability, and auditory attention ability, the researchers discovered that the older adults certainly tended to report less listening-related fatigue than younger adults.

This decrease in listening-related fatigue among older adults appeared to be associated with age-related drops in mood disruption and sensory-processing sensitivity.

In addition, the study investigators also discovered that older adults had lower auditory attention ability compared to their younger counterparts, which was linked to less listening-related fatigue, although only for people who have high sensory-processing sensitivity.

Study Limitation

In a similar Digital News Today report, McGarrigle is quoted saying, "We all know relatively little about the prevalence of listening-related fatigue" in other groups which include people who have cognitive and language deficits, or those who are routinely communicating in their non-native language.

He also said that a limitation of the present research is that it is based largely on self-report data. Meaning, one cannot rule out the plausibility of subjective biases in participant responses. Lately, the study findings have been correlational in nature. Future research investigating causal factors underlying listening-related fatigue is warranted.

Related information about listening fatigue is shown on New Record Day's YouTube video below:

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