peer reviewedThe aim of this study is to assess the impact of hearing status on age-related decrease in
verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This was done by administering a battery of
verbal STM tasks to elderly and young adult participants matched for hearing thresholds, as
well as to young normal-hearing control participants. The matching procedure allowed us to
assess the importance of hearing loss as an explanatory factor of age-related STM decline. We
observed that elderly participants and hearing-matched young participants showed equal
levels of performance in all verbal STM tasks, and performed overall lower than the normal hearing young control participants. This study provides evidence for recent theoretical
accounts considering reduced hearing level as an important explanatory factor of poor auditory-verbal STM performance in older adults
