Using response time to speech as a measure for listening effort

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Psychoacoustics
• Speech processing

Background:

• Intelligible speech may still require different listening effort.
• Background noise is a significant factor in auditory comprehension.
• Understanding the impact of noise on cognitive tasks involving speech is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how background noise affects response time to intelligible speech.
• To explore the relationship between signal-to-noise ratio and speech processing efficiency.

Main Methods:

• Stationary noise was added to spoken digit triplets.
• Response times were measured for two tasks: digit identification and arithmetic calculation.
• Twelve normal-hearing participants were involved in the study.

Main Results:

• Response time increased as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) decreased, even at high intelligibility levels.
• The arithmetic task showed a greater impact of noise on response time compared to the identification task.
• Higher variance in response times was observed for the arithmetic task.

Conclusions:

• Response times to speech stimuli are significantly affected by SNR, even when intelligibility is optimal.
• These findings suggest a link between response time differences and listening effort.
• The results may inform the evaluation of hearing aid signal processing, particularly at positive SNRs.