Hearing and visual acuity predict cognitive function in adults aged 45–85 years: Findings from the baseline wave of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA)

Associations between sensory status and cognitive performance are now widely reported. However, important open questions remain, including whether the associations are similar across sensory modalities, whether sensory status predicts cognitive performance independent of the cognitive task modality, and whether demographic/health variables moderate these associations. We examined data from a population sample of 30,029 Canadians aged 45-85 (the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging). Hearing was measured as the better ear pure-tone threshold average and vision as the better-eye pinhole-corrected visual acuity. Controlling for age, education, sex, multilingual status, and the other sensory modality, participants with poorer hearing had poorer auditory verbal learning and memory (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test) and executive function (Stroop, phonemic and semantic oral fluency, mental alternation) and those with poorer vision had poorer executive function. The sensory-cognitive associations were largely independent of the modality of test administration. The association between hearing loss and executive function was greater for persons who were older and those who had more health conditions. The association between vision loss and executive function was greater for persons with less than secondary school education. This study is one of the few that considers hearing and vision jointly, allowing us to compare the independent effects of each sensory modality on cognition and to express those effects as age equivalencies. This work demonstrates that hearing and vision are independently associated with cognitive performance in middle-aged to older aged adults (over-and-above key demographic variables) and independent of test modality. Executive functions appear to be particularly sensitive to associations between sensory function and demographic and health variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).