New BrainHearing evidence on speech understanding and listening effort
Summary
For people with hearing loss, understanding speech in noise is known to be exhausting. While processing speech in quiet may be effortless even for people with hearing loss, understanding speech in noise becomes increasingly exhausting as the noise increases. People with normal hearing, however, may likewise experience difficulties understanding speech in noise, with increased effort as the noise level rises.
A recent study investigated the listening effort and speech understanding in normal-hearing listeners using the objective methodology of pupillometry. The study examined the point of giving up for the normal-hearing listeners. Giving up can occur when a person tries to understand speech but it requires so much effort that the result is not rewarding enough (such as
unsuccessful speech understanding). This can happen when the acoustical scenario is too difficult, for example.
In addition to providing useful knowledge about listening effort in a normal-hearing population, this study may be used in the future as a reference to studies that investigate listening effort in people with hearing loss.
Josefine Juul Jensen, M.A.
Clinical Research Audiologist
Centre for Applied Audiology Research, Oticon A/S