Decreased facial emotion recognition in elderly patients with hearing loss reflects diminished social cognition

Objective: The main objective of this research was to evaluate the correlation between the severity of hearing loss and the facial emotional recognition as a critical part of social cognition in elderly patients. Methods: The prospective study was comprised of 85 individuals. The participants were divided into 3 groups. The first group consisted of 30 subjects older than 65 years with a bilateral pure-tone average mean >30 dB HL. The second group consisted of 30 subjects older than 65 years with a PTA mean <= 30 dB HL. The third group consisted of 25 healthy subjects with ages ranging between 18 and 45 years and a PTA mean <= 25 dB HL. A Facial Emotion Identification Test and a Facial Emotion Discrimination Test were administered to all groups. Results: Elderly subjects with hearing loss performed significantly worse than the other 2 groups on the facial emotion identification and discrimination tests (P < .05). Appealingly, they identified a positive emotion, "happiness," more accurately in comparison to the other negative emotions. Conclusions: Our results suggest that increased age might be associated with decreased facial emotion identification and discrimination scores, which could be deteriorated in the presence of significant hearing loss.