Association of Cognition and Age-Related Hearing Impairment in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Importance: Evidence has linked age-related hearing impairment (ARHI) with cognitive decline; however, very few studies (none in the United Kingdom) explore this link in large well-characterized groups of community-dwelling individuals.

Objective: To investigate the link between ARHI and cognitive decline using a cohort of elderly individuals from the United Kingdom and explore untreated hearing loss and social isolation as potential explanations for the observed link.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional analysis of wave 7 (June 2014 through May 2015) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) sampled men and women 50 years or older and living in the United Kingdom in a community setting.

Children's Development and Parental Input: Evidence From the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

In this study, we use the UK Millennium Cohort Study to estimate a dynamic factor model of child development. Our model follows the children from birth until 7 years of age and allows for both cognitive and noncognitive abilities in children. We find a significant self-productivity effect in both cognitive and noncognitive development, as well as some evidence of dynamic dependence across different abilities.

Estimating the critical and sensitive periods of investment in early childhood: a methodological note.

The identification of critical periods in early human development requires statistical analyses beyond simple cross tabulation of correlations of observed variables. This paper provides an overview of different quantitative methods available for the statistical analysis of longitudinal data regarding child development, and in particular the identification of critical and sensitive periods for later abilities. It draws heavily on the work on human skill formation developed by the economist James Heckman, which treats ability as a latent variable and explains its formation through the simultaneous estimation of structural equations of investments and achieved abilities across time.