Yes, in theory. Not so much noise, but speech. And specifically speech that you are engaged with, most likely. Versus speech to which you aren't paying much att

Yes, in theory. Not so much noise, but speech. And specifically speech that you are engaged with, most likely. Versus speech to which you aren't paying much attention. Normal child development is uniquely contingent on the child hearing a lot of speech. It is known that unless deaf people get cochlear implants at the youngest possible age, their intellectual development risks being stunted due to lack of heard language. Which begs the hypothesis that a positive effect of hearing aids in prevention of cognitive decline is due to maintenance of heard speech. A related hypothesis might be that any correlation between a high degree of social activity and less cognitive decline is, at least in part, due to the same mechanism. As could be any correlation to playing chess, etc, due to this hidden variable.