Behavioral Manifestations of Listening Effort

Sponsor

University of Miami (Other)

Overall Status

Completed

CT.gov ID

NCT03087045

Collaborator

(none)

Enrollment

Location

Actual Duration (Days)

73.1

Patients Per Site Per Month

Study Details

Study Description

Brief Summary

The purpose of this investigation is to investigate the behavioral manifestations of listening effort. Quantifying listening effort based on an easy to measure behavioral metric would allow for better understanding of the effort that goes into processing conversational speech. The investigators hypothesize that the behavior modifications required to improve the signal to noise ratio in increasingly complex listening environments significantly deviates from quiet listening environments. Further, the investigators hypothesize that this directly contributes to increased listening effort and reduced ability to accurately monitor content for everyday conversation.

Condition or Disease	Intervention/Treatment	Phase
Listening Effort

Detailed Description

Listening Effort has been described as a reflection of the cognitive resources necessary for speech understanding. Measures can broadly be classified into Subjective, Physiological and Behavioral measures of Listening Effort (LE). Subjective measures of LE involve the listener rating or answering a questionnaire on the presented auditory stimuli. Some examples of Subjective measures are the multidimensional speech, spatial and qualities (SSQ) scale and Listening effort rating scale. However, these measures suffer from individual bias, for example, what one person might find takes more effort, another might not.

Physiological measures establish relationships between changes in the central and/or autonomic nervous system activity and LE. Effect of LE on central nervous system activity include methods such as using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to compare processing of noise vocoded versus clear sentence stimuli and using Electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor memory/cognitive load. Some methods of measuring effects on Autonomic Nervous system are through Pupillometry and Skin Conductance. Research has found that fluctuating pupil size may be an indicator of mental task load and/or attention, stress and memory. Furthermore, Pupillometric methods have been used to correlate changing measures like pupil size and listening tasks. There are some drawbacks of using pupillometry to measure LE- Absolute pupil size and change in pupil size for presented speech change according to the age of the listener. For instance, Older adults have been found to have smaller absolute pupil size and show lesser change in pupil size when moving from difficult to easier listening conditions. These drawbacks can be accounted for by normalizing the pupil size.

Behavioral measures take into account that the there is a decline in cognitive functions over prolonged mental effort used an auditory dual task paradigm where the primary task was word recognition and the secondary tasks were memory recall and Visual Response times. Apart from the Dual tasks, participants were also asked to assign a subjective rating based on SSQ. Findings revealed 1) that there is empirical evidence linking repeated instances of effortful listening and subsequent cognitive failure and 2) self- report measures did not show the same changes as the behavioral measures. It has been suggested that this may indicate that subjective (self-report) measures and behavioral measures assess separate aspects of fatigue. It may also be due to subjective measures having individual biases.

As mentioned above, there are numerous studies of subjective, objective and behavioral measures of LE, yet, there are no studies of the actual behavior employed by listeners to reduce listening effort. Further, researchers do not understand how these behaviors influence the ability of the listener to monitor and maintain conversational speech. Listeners must rely on both peripheral and central auditory mechanisms to process speech. As the auditory signal increases in complexity, likewise there is an increase in the auditory processing required to understand speech. The effort that the auditory system must put forth to process complex signals is even greater if the signal degraded or imbedded in competing signals such as background noise. This requires increased exertion and mental effort on the part of the listener, and results in a reduction in ability to maintain focus and an increase in fatigue. These issues are further amplified in the presence of a peripheral hearing disorder as listeners do not have the mechanisms required to properly process even simple and unchallenged auditory signals. Research has demonstrated decreasing word recognition accuracy with decreasing Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and demonstrated an increase in listening effort when speech was presented in increasingly negative SNRs. Numerous studies have reported on the increase in listening effort required for individuals with hearing loss.

The purpose of this investigation is quantify listening effort based subjective, objective and behavioral measures at different Signal to Noise Ratios (SNR).

Study Design

Study Type:

Observational

Actual Enrollment :

12 participants

Observational Model:

Cohort

Time Perspective:

Prospective

Official Title:

Behavioral Manifestations of Listening Effort

Actual Study Start Date :

Mar 13, 2017

Actual Primary Completion Date :

Mar 18, 2017

Actual Study Completion Date :

Mar 18, 2017

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcome Measures

Evaluate behavior modifications employed by listeners to optimize the signal to noise ratio and decrease listening effort in complex listening environments. [One hour]
We will evaluate compensatory strategies required by listeners to optimize listening in negative signal to noise ratios
Identify correlations in Listening effort measured using Pupillometry [One hour]
Pupillometry has been shown to be an accurate objective measure of listening effort. We will compare the behavioral responses of increased listening effort to physiologic response as measured by change in pupil size

Eligibility Criteria

Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study:

18 Years to 40 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study:

All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers:

Yes

Inclusion Criteria:

Normal Hearing

Exclusion Criteria:

Do not meet inclusion criteria
Pregnant women
Prisoners
Does not speak English
Those displaying cognitive impairment (Potential study subjects will be screened for potential cognitive impairments that may negatively influence control data. We will use the validated mini mental exam)

Contacts and Locations

Locations

	Site	City	State	Country	Postal Code
1	University of Miami Department of Otolaryngology	Miami	Florida	United States	33136

Sponsors and Collaborators

University of Miami

Investigators

Principal Investigator: Hillary Snapp, AuD, University of Miami

Study Documents (Full-Text)

None provided.

More Information

Publications

Responsible Party:

Hillary A Snapp, Assistant Professor, University of Miami

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:

NCT03087045

Other Study ID Numbers:

20170031

First Posted:

Mar 22, 2017

Last Update Posted:

Jul 23, 2021

Last Verified:

Jul 1, 2021

Individual Participant Data (IPD) Sharing Statement:

Plan to Share IPD:

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Drug Product:

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Device Product:

Study Results

No Results Posted as of Jul 23, 2021