Auditory Working Memory: A Comparison Study in Adults with Normal Hearing and Mild to Moderate Hearing Loss

Abstract

Working memory has a crucial role in one’s effective communication, especially for the speech and language comprehension. The purpose of this study is to compare the auditory working memory capacity (AWMC) in normal hearing adults and adults with mild to moderate hearing loss using digit span tasks from WAIS- IV. This paper attempts to increase the audiologist’s knowledge about the relationship between AWMC and mild to moderate hearing loss in adults by comparing AWMC with respect to type, laterality and duration of hearing loss. This paper also examines current literature on auditory working memory (AWM) and provides a brief overview about working memory associated with various communication disorders in adults like hearing loss, attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), auditory processing disorders (APD) and learning disabilities (LD). Total 40 participants were involved in this study among that 20 were having hearing sensitivity within normal limits (control group) and other 20 were having mild to moderate hearing loss (experimental group). The results show that the AWMC of individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss is poor when compared to individuals with normal hearing. The poor AWMC in conductive and mixed hearing loss group when compared to sensor neural hearing loss group is also a major finding of the study. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of assessing AWM in audiology clinical setting