EXPRESS: Memory for health information: Influences of age, hearing aids, and multisensory presentation.

Background: We investigated how presenting online health information in different modalities can influence memory, as this may be particularly important for older adults who may need to make regular decisions about health, and could also face additional challenges such as memory deficits and sensory impairment (hearing loss).

Objectives: We tested whether, as predicted by some literature, older adults would disproportionately benefit from audio-visual (AV) information compared with visual-only (VO) or auditory-only (AO) information, relative to young adults.

Research design & methods: Participants were 78 young adults (aged 18-30 years old, mean=25.50 years), 78 older adults with normal hearing (aged 65-80 years old, mean=68.34 years), and 78 older adults who wear hearing aids (aged 65-79 years old, mean=70.89 years).

Results & discussion: There were no significant differences in the amount of information remembered across modalities (AV, VO, AO), no differences across participant groups, and we did not find the predicted interaction between participant group and modality. The older-adult groups performed worse than young adults on background measures of cognition, with the exception of a vocabulary test, suggesting that they may have been using strategies based on prior knowledge and experience to compensate for cognitive and/or sensory deficits.

Implications: The findings indicate that cost-effective, text-based websites may be just as useful as those with edited videos for conveying health information to all age groups, and hearing aid users.