Chapter 9- Listening Effort

Question 1

“Older Adults Expend More Listening Effort than Young Adults Recognizing Speech in Noise” Anderson-Gosselin and Gagane (2011)

Answer 1

Purpose:
• To quantify the amount of listening effort that young and old adults expend when they listen to speech in noise
• To examine relationship between self-reported listening effort and objective measures

Method: Dual-task paradigm with 2 experimental conditions
• Primary task: Closed-set sentence-recognition test
• Secondary task: Vibrotactile pattern recognition test
• 2 experimental conditions:
o Level of noise was the same
o Baseline word recognition performance didn’t differ between groups

Results:
• Older adults expended more listening effort than young adults in both experimental conditions

Conclusions:
• Older adults require more processing resources to understand speech in noise

Question 2

“Pupil Response as an Indication of Effortful Listening: The Influence of Sentence Intelligibility,” Zekveld, Kramer, and Festen (2010)

Answer 2

Purpose:
• Evaluate effect of sentence intelligibility on pupil dilation response during listening
• Pupil dilation can be used to study listening effort

Methods:
• Subjects performed 3 SRT tests while listening to sentences in stationary noise
• Subjects rated experienced listening effort and estimated their performance level

Results:
• SNR conditions increased as function of speech intelligibility level
• Peak dilation amplitude, mean pupil dilation, and peak latency increased with decreasing SNR of the speech in noise

Conclusions:
• Listening effort increases with decreasing speech intelligibility

Question 3

“Cognitive Load During Speech Perception in Noise: The Influence of Age, Hearing Loss, and Cognition on the Pupil Response,” Zekveld, Kramer, and Feston (2011)

Answer 3

Purpose:
• Evaluate effect of age, HL, and cognitive ability on cognitive processing load while listening to speech presented in noise

Methods:
• 3 SRT in stationary noise tests

Results:
• HL related to poor SRTs
• Higher speech intelligibility associated with lower effort

Conclusions:
• Pupil response increased with decreasing speech intelligibility
• Aging and hearing loss were related to release from effort when increasing intelligibility of speech in noise which may induce cognitive overload
• Better cognitive abilities associated with greater cognitive load

Question 4

What is the FUEL model?

Answer 4

Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening

“Deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles in goal pursuit when carrying out a [listening] task”