Cognitive control strategies in hearing impairment: a study with the AX–CPT

Abstract

Objective

The present study investigated the impact of hearing impairment on the implementation of proactive and reactive cognitive control strategies across the ageing process.

Methods

31 hearing-impaired (HI) individuals with one cochlear implant and 41 normal-hearing (NH) listeners of different ages performed the AX–CPT, a well-validated task to measure proactive and reactive cognitive control strategies. Data from both accuracy and response times (RTs) were analysed by mixed effect models that considered trial type, group, age and their interactions.

Results

Both accuracy and RT analyses showed significant interactions between trial type, group and age. Specifically, with ageing, the NH group had lower performance on AY and BX trials (i.e. the most conflicting trial types of the AX–CPT associated with proactive and reactive control). Conversely, HI participants yielded higher performance on the same trial types at older ages. However, for the HI group only, the accuracy benefits observed for AY and BX trials were coupled with an age-related RT increase on both trial types (i.e. speed accuracy trade-off).

Conclusion

The present findings show a different utilisation of cognitive control strategies in HI participants as compared to NH listeners, at both younger and older ages.

Keywords:

• Cochlear implantation
• proactive control
• reactive control

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Lisa Gamberini for her assistance with data collection, and Dr. Vincenza Tarantino for useful discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).