Benichov et al (2012) evaluated 53 adults (ages 19 to 89 years, mean age 56 years) with regard to age, hearing acuity (based on high-frequency, pure tone average), a composite score of cognitive function (created from tests of episodic memory, working memory and speed of processing) and verbal ability (based on WAIS and WTAR) with regard to the use of linguistic context on word recognition.
They report that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required for correct word recognition is inversely related to the probability of the same word occurring in the sentence context. After exploring the effects of aging, hearing acuity and cognitive ability with regard to spoken word recognition, they note age and cognitive ability contribute significant variance across all contextual conditions tested, while hearing acuity ceased to be a significant contributor to recognition thresholds in the high context conditions. Specifically, even with a moderate hearing loss, linguistic content provides a powerful effect with regard to improving recognition , and linguistic context may "virtually override differences among listeners" with regard to hearing acuity. Their regression analysis indicates cognitive ability is a significant predictor of word recognition—even after statistically controlling for hearing acuity.